UPDATE: That discussion got way out of hand way too fast. I welcome free speech and I want people to be able to express their opinion, no matter how I much I disagree with it, but I insist on civility. I will accept any and all criticisms about being a tyrant, bully, bad journalist, head-in-the-sand-ostrich or whatever to enforce it. It’s my site and I won’t accept name-calling or general meanness.

To be fair I wiped out all previous comments, but they’re still open if anyone wants to restart the conversation.

I said I wasn’t going to get too involved in this one, and for now I’m sticking to that, though I’ll probably have my say when I review the actual figure. But I thought I’d highlight two things. First, here is the Four Horsemen’s final word, via their Twitter account:

After seeing a photo, that’s definitely not the way we’d intended the forearms to be positioned. Not sure what happened or why. […]we’ve finished it, they have every right to do so. They’re the ones assuming all of the financial responsibility & risk. The bottom line is that this is Mattel’s property. Not ours. If they decide that it’s best to alter something like that after…

I can appreciate the Horsemen’s diplomatic answer here – no suggestion of a production error. But James Sawyer at MOTUCfigures.com isn’t equivocating in his take on the situation:

[…]since the musculature of your inner forearm isn’t the same as your outer forearm, this piece probably wasn’t intended to be interchangeable by the Horsemen when they sculpted it. The 4H know their anatomy… so when they sculpt a body part, it is sculpted as an accurate (albeit dramaticized) representation of its living counterpart. They then leave it to production, hoping that the final version will reflect it accurately. Of course, sometimes stuff happens when it leaves their hands…

[…]

[…]so in a line where parts re-use is a linchpin in capturing the vintage feel, [Mattel] suddenly felt the need to mix it up a little? Why here, why now? We’ve been told again, and again, AND AGAIN that [Mattel isn’t] going to reinvent the wheel with these figures- What you see with the vintage counterpart is what you’ll get in MOTUC. We all know it, we’ve all become accustomed to it, we all accept it. So why in the world would [Mattel] all of the sudden decide that Stinkor needs to “pop more”?

[…]

I’m sure a few of you are thinking things like “oh, it isn’t even that noticeable”, “there are more important things to get upset about”, or “quit complaining- it is only a $20 figure” and that is perfectly fine. You are entitled to your opinion. To me, the figure is incorrectly assembled and the response to the situation is laughable. To so blindly accept such mediocrity is really hard for me to understand. […] You are a consumer and you are entitled to get the product delivered to you in a correct manner.