Tomopop Review: Patch Together's Space Monkey Al

6:00 PM on 02.11.2010   |   Rio McCarthy

Patch Together just keeps coming with their fantastic pieces, and what we have up for review today is Space Monkey Al. He's been in production for a while now, and we're here to see how he stands up! Al is the leader of the now defunct NASA project "APE" (astro-primate-explorers). Apparently he is the only one on Earth who has ever seen the SaucerNauts that follow him everywhere he goes.

Hit the jump to see how this resin banana loving monkey gets along out of the box!

First off it's nice to see a little something extra on the otherwise white box for Al. I thought it was cute that the background of the label is a constellation in the form of Al's head.

As per usual, here is the styrofoam nest that the toys usually rest in. As you can tell most of the pieces are nicely wrapped so that they don't break or get scratched.

Al comes in several pieces, but there's a nice surprise with this figure. There's NO GLUING involved! This made me incredibly happy since gluing toys does actually make me a bit nervous. All of the pieces fit nicely together and I hope to see more toys done this way from them.

As you can see the hands slip on quite nicely, as does the tail. It was a breath of fresh air to see them fit so well and that the banana can be held by the tail without making the weight distribution be off balance.

With all of the positives, there's only one thing that struck me as a bit off and that is the neck. Although I do appreciate that you can swivel his head around for some dynamic poses, it seems that the metal peg for the neck is just a bit too tall.

It's not drastic by any means, but it's pretty visible if it's not at a more eye-level setting. It's nowhere near a breaking point for me on the figure, but it's something that should be addressed. If it were just sanded down a bit it should fit just fine.

Although he doesn't seem to be very big he actually measures in around 6 1/2 inches tall! There's a lot of character that shines through in this little guy, and I really like the design a lot.

Lucky for all you Space Monkey fans Al is still in stock over on the Patch Together store, and you can pick yourself up one now for $44.95. This is one of the best put together pieces I've seen yet, and I really enjoy this piece a lot. I would definitely suggest you pick him up now before he gets sold out!