The figures themselves actually stand fine on their own but you need to balance them since they're extremely light and will fall over if you so much as breath lightly in their direction. The stands allow for more dynamic posing.
The stands themselves are okay. Not bad but not particularly sturdy. My Sailor Moon stand had already cracked on the right pincer's socket which is annoying because now it doesn't grip Sailor Moon very well at all. The stands are your typical clear robot arm stands but they include a unique base with their symbol and name.
The figures themselves are definitely 1/12th scale. I thought they were kind of small initially because people were calling them 6" figures but that's a bit misleading as they are not quite 6 inches tall but as you can see, they're the correct average height for their age as compared to a DCUC Donna Troy, Ami stands just about half an inch shorter than her.
One cool feature that I was hoping would be included was Ami's little pocket computer and visor which she does come with. In fact, she comes with one opened pocket computer and one closed one and a separate visor piece that is attached to her bangs. This is a good idea considering how small these accessories are, I could imagine a tiny peg or hinge snapping off from opening and closing the computer. Plus there's no real other way to attach the visor piece without it looking bad.
Here are all the extras that you get with Sailor Mercury so that you can give her a large amount of display options. She comes with 9 extra hands, one of which grips the computer and also 3 additional faces sporting various expressions and of course the 2 computers and the visor hair piece.
I will also note that the hands don't work on Sailor Moon as the pegs appear to be different which sucks since in reality, there's no way to tell whose hand is whose so I don't understand why they did that at all as this would have greatly increased the display options. Also, the face pieces are incompatible as Ami's face pegs are molded just slightly bigger than Usagi's but this is fine because the gems on their tiaras would not match the character anyway.
Overall, I'm happy with the figure but that's mostly out of nostalgia. Don't get me wrong, the figure looks GREAT and looks exactly like they leaped off the screen. In fact, I've never really seen a figure that accurately captured their look, ever. This is rather odd since they don't have a particularly complex face design. What I like best of all is that they are definitely not dolls. They're 100% action figures. They have plastic hair, articulation points to put them into dynamic poses and plastic, not soft good clothing.
On the other hand, the build quality of the figure should have been a lot better and the fact that her arm wasn't attached and now it falls off whenever I rotate it or change a hand is irritating. Also the incompatible hands thing is silly and I just don't get it. I'm most likely going to get the rest of them but I can really see these benefiting from a larger scale so that they don't have to be so delicate but then I could huck Donna Troy across the room at a wall and I know she would probably still be fine where as this same scaled figure feels extremely weak limbed and flimsy. Heck, I've got MUs that can put up with more abuse than these but I digress.
PROS- They look great. 100% cartoon accurate. Displays nicely. Decent articulation. Lots of accessories. Nostalgia.
CONS- Expensive for what they are at around $32 to $55 each. 1:12 scale flimsy toys that feel more like model kits. Stands are made from crummy weak plastic. Joints are weak. Needs better quality control.
I can only recommend these if you were a HUGE fan of the series. If you're just looking for something cool and random to display, there are a lot of better options out there for a lot less money.
