Toy Review: SOTA Street Fighter Guile Review

Leading the line up in the 3rd Wave [Round 3] of SOTA Toys 15th Anniversary Street fighter action figures was Guile. And he proved to be a fan favourite not just in the game, but in the toy form too. And here’s why.



Guile features a variety of accessories, which consists of an alternate head, 2 sonic boom effects, and 3 extra interchangeable hands. He has 5 hands in total and this provides a lot of options for interesting and dynamic posing. Although not really an accessory as such, Guile also comes with a really cool chain around his neck, which holds the 2 Dog tags, as were seen when the character was first introduced in Street Fighter 2 The World Warrior.

The sculpting of the Guile figure is fantastic, he looks and feels very solid and durable and is a very accurate rendition of the World Warrior to Super Turbo artwork era. He does not have so many Anime Alpha inspired influences as some of the other characters in the SOTA Line, and personally I think that it actually works to this particular figures benefit.

After seeing the recent Street Figure IV inspired action figure offerings from NECA, I came to the conclusion that while those figures are really well made and very faithful renditions of the Street Fighter 4 art style, they can also have a tendency to alienate some of the fans who may prefer something a little bit more traditional and perhaps not such heavily stylized depictions of the characters. And this is where the SOTA Guile figure shines.

He stands at around 6” tall, and it is an ideal height for those who may also collect 6” Marvel toys, and makes recreating scenes from cross over games like marvel VS Capcom possible.

The paint job is great. There are a lot of subtle gradations in the skin tone, and there were no areas of sloppy paint work. Since its initial release I was fortunate to purchase 2 of these figures and they were both painted to a very high standard.

Guile also features around 33 points of articulation. But all of the cuts and joints are well hidden, and the articulation does not in the slightest way detract from the overall cohesiveness of the figure.

It is very difficult to fault this figure, but if there was one thing I would say it is that the alternate open mouth head does not really convey the right emotions. While his mouth is open his eyes do not seem to reflect the expression of his mouth, making the overall head look a bit lifeless, when viewed from the front. However, that is a very minor issue, and the head does look great when viewed from diagonal and side views.

All in all this really is a testament to the effort that was invested into the initial 4 waves of SOTA's 15th Anniversary Street Fighter Figures. And I would certainly recommend this to any Street fighter or general action figure fan.

Review and photographs by Dean René Middleton
Staff Reviewer