Tomopop Review: Patch Together's Miss Mary Jane

9:00 PM on 06.22.2010   |   Rio McCarthy

Miss Mary Jane is a piece designed by Paigey and brought to life by Patch Together. I will fully admit it's not a figure of substance I would normally partake in, considering I live a straight edge lifestyle, but I can always appreciate good design, and interesting personal takes. I am, however, a fan of the color green, so there's always that!

Paigey states that Miss Mary Jane was her muse and mistress for many years, and that she hopes that she can do the same for you and help you take the edge off. Besides Miss Mary Jane, she has created some other phenomenal and fun pieces, which you can see on her website, so be sure to check those out as well!

Hit the jump to see what kind of interesting tidbits we can learn from Miss Mary Jane herself!

As you can see Miss Mary Jane comes with the usual white box and styrofoam packaging, but she gets a tad bit more fancy label on the box. Her box shows the original design of Miss Mary Jane, as well as some extra details to give you more of an idea of what she is if you're not too quick on the intake. I like the idea of labels on the Patch Together boxes, as it's not quite as much of a surprise as to what you're getting, but then again I'm fond of surprises as well so I'm easy to please.

Since she requires a small bit of construction, there are instructions as to how you should put her together. Of course, you also get my favorite extra goody, which is the super glue. No, it's not for sniffing, I just happen to need it for resin kits on a constant basis, and so I love getting extras when I'm getting close to running out.

As you can see above, there is only one item that needs to be glued into place. With that item being the headpiece/zipper bag it's not an overly hard thing to accomplish since there's only one place it can go.

Up above you can see a bit of the paint being a tad haphazard, but this isn't an area you really have to worry about too much. That tab on the clear part of the bag is where you'll want to aim your glue, as well as in the hole that appears behind Miss Mary Jane's afro.

The aforementioned hole is shown above, and you'll need to hold the piece in place while gluing it. If you don't have the patience for that, you might find something to lean it against, but be sure not to glue it to the item that you're leaning it against. As you might have noticed the arm on the right side of the photo looks a bit off...

Well interestingly enough it was the opposite one that fell off, so apparently looks can be deceiving. This was easily fixed by gluing it back into place, so it wasn't a big deal. I assume it just must not have gotten glued tight enough before it shipped.

Once she's all together she's actually pretty tall. Even though she's sitting on her legs she still measures in around 8 1/2 inches tall! Her afro and hood help to get her that extra boost in the height world, but everything looks nice and is in proportion. I especially like that she's curvy and looks more like a real person, as opposed to some of the figures we see out there in the toy world.

The color changes throughout the afro are interesting, even if they're not exactly how they looked in the original artwork. I think it gives a neat contrast that at least look neat in photos, if nothing else. The green and orange-ish brown gives in a bit of extra depth which looks nice as well.

The behind view shows the details of the baggy hood quite nicely, and you can see that it really does replicate the look of a Ziploc® bag quite well. It has a bit of a milky tone, which the bags I have in the drawer have as well, so that makes it extra neat in my book. The folds in her clothing look nice as well.

This entire piece was cast very well, and all of the pieces were intact - except for the arm, but that was just a minor gluing issue, not a casting issue. As you can see in the photo above, even small parts such as her toes came out nicely and everything stayed together without any pieces breaking off.

There were a few painting flaws, like the ones you can see on her back. It's a bit tough to see in the photo, but there are some random areas that have some of the light green paint here and there in the creases of her clothes. They're not as noticeable from far away of course, and they most likely vary from piece to piece, but I thought I'd make notice of it since it appeared on my figure.

All in all this is a fun and different piece, and if she's your cup of inspirational tea I would definitely suggest you pick her up on Patch Together before she sells out. She'll cost you $59.95 plus shipping but if you're in need of a muse, she's a much healthier option that'll be much cheaper in the long run. Miss Mary Jane is a new and creative take on old substance, so head on over to Patch Together now and see if you can get your hands on this resin beauty for yourself.