I don’t know how you loyal readers feel but I can’t help but feel like I’m on a roll with so many great Nintendo figures to review lately.  The most recent example of this is the World of Nintendo Inkling Kid figure.  As I’m sure I have said on the site, I’m not really a fan of Splatoon.  I played the game for a couple of weeks and just couldn’t really get into it the way I would have liked but from the moment I saw this figure, I knew I wanted to review it.  The quality looked so good and it looked like the accessory is something different than other World of Nintendo figures I’ve purchased.  As a result, I’m excited to take a look at this figure and see if it is one of the better World of Nintendo figures I’ve reviewed or not!

Box – I still enjoy the Splatoon art in World of Nintendo.  It is colorful and stands out in a way that the Mario and Star Fox designs do not.  Keep making bold and colorful designs like this Jakks Pacific!

Details – One of the thing that struck me about this figure is how detailed and clean the paint looked.  When I bought this Inkling Boy, it was the only one they had at Meijer and I’m happy to say, the paint looked really solid in the packaging.  Once I opened it, I was very impressed and surprised that there are no real issues.  How has Jakks gone from a very inconsistent paint quality to having no real issues in the last couple figures I have reviewed?  I’m noticing that they are relying more and more on decals much like Amiibo do.  The decals help bring out the details and seem to be consistently high quality.  It was also cool how Jakks gave the Inkling Boy a tank on his back that is removable.  I take a lot of pictures from the back of figures just so you can see what you’re getting and I can definitively say that this is one of the few that actually look cool from that angle.  After collecting these figures for two years, I’m thrilled to see the improvement in the quality of World of Nintendo and it is getting ever closer to matching the quality of Amiibo.

Articulation – The other test of whether this would be a good figure is the articulation.  The Inklings run and jump in and out of the ink in Splatoon so a figure needs to be fluid and dynamic to match the characters in the game.  While there aren’t more points of articulation than usual for World of Nintendo, what is here works well.  For example, the Inklings head can rotate 360 degrees which is better than a lot of World of Nintendo figures. He can also not only bend but rotate at the elbows which is really helpful with his accessory.  Overall, the articulation is just a little bit above average and as I will talk about next, you can definitely get some fun display options out of this figure.

Accessory – The other thing that really excited me about Inkling Boy is that it has an accessory that truly makes the figure better.  Sure, getting a mushroom or star with Mario is cool but getting a gun the Inkling Boy can carry and pose with is much better.  As I tried to put the gun into the Inkling’s hand, I was glad to see it snaps into place in the hand.  The Inkling can grip the gun securely which makes it very easy to pose him as you can see in the pictures below.

This is a big deal in my opinion because you can really get some clever and fun poses out of this figure.  While I think a lot of these poses are truly display worthy, the only potential weakness I found is that his “off-hand” which should help hold the gun really doesn’t work as well as it should and doesn’t convincingly hold the gun.  Using one hand works best as you can see in the pictures.

Closing Thoughts – I really had a blast playing around with this figure and bringing you this review.  There are only very minor downsides to this figure and it is definitely one of the best I’ve seen in World of Nintendo.  It is tempting to say that if Jakks were to make a female version or variations of the Inklings with different accessories and outfits, World of Nintendo would be the figures to collect instead of Amiibo.  The Inklings fit the action figure model very well, they’re fun to play with, and World of Nintendo lets you capture the spirit of the game better than the Amiibo that have been released thus far.