Haruhara Haruko & Cosmic Scooter Action Figurine

Product Information/Specifications

Introduction

I wanted to get this Haruhara Haruko figurine for a long time when it first came out.  It looked cool & that scooter sealed the deal.  After five years, I finally got it from eBay for a low price.  Getting it for a low price & actually finding wasn't easy since this has been out of production for a long time.  Even the Diamond Comics version is hard to get.  I assume this figurine was reissued once in Japan.  The version I got is the Japanese one.

The Review 

Haruhara Haruko & Cosmic Scooter out of the package

Haruko comes with a nice amount of accessories to play with.  It has two kinds of guitar straps, the guitar, a guitar case, an extra head, & of course the Cosmic Scooter.  Before going any further, you may see a piece of tape on the top of the scooter.  I put it there because it fell from my top shelf & broke.  I tried to glue it with the little glue I had, but it didn't work since my glue was old & had little amount in it.

The guitar straps are very tough to put on the guitar.  If you are a guitarist or seen how the straps are put on, you will know what I'm talking about.  The holes on the straps come out the guitar & are too small to put on.  You need to drill it a bit.  Plus, the strap straightens itself back when you try to bend it.  By the way, you can't put the guitar in the guitar case.

Haruko & scooter from different sides

Since Haruko is poseable, you can customize her the way you want.  However, there's a big problem with that.  The articulations on Haruko are terrible!  It uses a peg system.  By adjusting the arms & legs, they can fall off.  I have a lot of troubles trying to pose her without pulling her arms & legs off.  At the waist area, she comes off too easily.  Plus, the legs are very limited.  It was hard for me to make her stand straight.  Look at the legs.  They are slanted & it's actually made like that.  I couldn't believe how bad this figurine was when I tried to pose it.

The scooter does a better job than Haruka at least.  Moving the handles will turn the front wheel.  The kick stand is adjustable to make it stand on its own.  Let's check out the paint job.

The etching job on the scooter is not bad.  Clean & sharp at the license plate & the "P!" logo.  As for the paint job, there were quite a lot of paint bleeds.  The silver lettering isn't too bad at least.  But I can't make out the word it's spelling out.

For Haruko, paint job is fine since her clothing & gear don't really have much designs on them.

The paint job on the guitar is pretty bad.  Look at the neck.  It gets worse near the body of the guitar.

Faces of Haruko

Haruko's faces are basically the same thing; the small smile she has on her face.  It's really the head that has the difference.  It's basically if you want her to have her goggles or not.  The facial expression Haruko has is a bit different from the manga & anime series.  She's calm looking here.  She's doesn't sport that insane or rowdy look.  Other than that, the paint job & detailing is done well.

Overall Conclusion

The Haruhara Haruko action figurine was surprisingly the worse figurine I have brought.  I seriously didn't think Kaiyodo will do such a bad job of her.  Ever since I brought here, I displayed her for a long time.  It was only until I started to take pics of her that I decided to put her back for good.  I had thought about putting her back many times before.  To top it off, I finally sold her away even though I mentioned that the scooter is broken.  It's repairable with glue anyways.

The grade that Haruko gets is a sic out of ten.  Haruko's articulations are very bad as creating poses for her are limited & the parts fall off when you move them.  Plus, the accessories are hard to put together.  The only good things about this product is the scooter & the number of accessories it has.

I strongly recommend not getting Haruko in your collection, no matter how popular it is.  If you seriously want to get this Haruko action figurine, I suggest you keep it in its packaging since it's very hard & poor to display.  That is, if you managed to find it.  As mentioned, she has been out of production for a long time.  The price of this figurine was pretty low at the time I sold her.  It could be the factor that the scooter is broken, but the popularity of FLCL has died down for a while now.

As for deciding which version to get, I would go for any of them.  Diamond or Japanese version, it'll be the same since you won't be taking it out from the package.

Photos were taken using Sony DSC-F828 digital still camera.

Last updated on February 12, 2008