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So it seems , like PERS before it, mass market figures are going to delve into haired figures. A possible problematic area.
What do you think of this idea?
Personally I have quite a few figures with rooted hair. It takes ALOT of work to make them look even passable.
I kinda feel like alot of these rooted hair figures will end up looking like garbage after a few months in collectors homes.
What do you guys think?
The moving eye feature was innovated by Enterbay and Hot Toys just stole it and patented it as their PERS to turn it into a selling gimmick. I think the first use of PERS was on the DX01 Joker. In the years since it was added to DX figures as a premium feature and then onto any random figures for that gimmick appeal. Personally, I never thought it added much value to a sculpt and in some cases actually created more problems.
Hot Toys did take the lead in developing a new fine sculpted hair mold with the first Terminator figure back around 2009. Until then there were limitations to how much detail a mold release could tolerate, but Hot Toys broke new ground by creating finer strands, ridges, grooves, peaks and spikes to create some very convincing plastic sculpted hair details. They’re still refining the level of fine detail to this day. I’ve seen some fantastic sculpted hair that leaves no desire for a rooted alternative. Have you seen the Art Figures Scissorhands? The sculpted hair on that little third party release is some of the best I’ve seen in 20 years of collecting.
InArt truly innovated in the area of "rooted" hair with the Joker figure by making a kind of sculpted and styled rigid wig. It's not really rooted, and as far as I can tell it’s a carefully styled strand hairpiece that's adhered to the sculpt. I was pretty impressed when I got mine because I really expected it to be the traditional synthetic rooted which is always more trouble than anything worth paying extra for. I doubt this "rooted" (actually non-rooted, so let’s say “faux-rooted”) hair will have any problems for years. It's not without some risks of shifting or becoming unruly, because these are loose strands, but the styling and whatever product they used to keep it in place is awfully stiff. As I mentioned, it's more like a sculpted form of rooted.
I don’t like rooted hair at all and feel like it’s out of sync with the largely plastic rest of the figure. Maybe if the sculpts were silicone to replicate flesh then rooted strand hair would fit a little better. Regardless, my experience with rooted hair was always bad to the point of ruining some figures for me. I think it only worked well on maybe two figures in my collection (a Black Widow and Sucker Punch Babydoll) where it required little maintenance. I still think sculpted hair can look much better than rooted just because of the deliberate and intentional detail that goes into it. However the sculptor chooses to style the hair it can be captured accurately in a sculpted form. Rooted means it’s random, to some extent, and that’s where its failure lies.
It was only recently, like last month, with InArt’s Joker where I saw how rooted (faux-rooted) can be done well when it’s an artisan project rather than a mass produced figure. InArt’s hairpiece added a lot of finesse to their Joker project. It worked and I would have felt like I chose a lesser figure if I bought the sculpted version. But this is a rare case and I’m waiting to see if they do as well with their Gandalf and Aragorn figures and use the same technique to create an equally accomplished version fo rooted hair. I trust they will!
This is now becoming a red herring race where both InArt and Hot Toys are throwing rooted hair on various figures without any real need. I understand that InArt’s concept is all about an elevated artisan alternative to traditional high-end 1:6 figures, but not every character needs this treatment. In the case of Joker it was something of a collector and customizer desire and dream project for many years to create the best Joker to date, but for various others characters it’s just not necessary. I really don’t think an Anakin reissue benefits from rooted hair when sculpted would have been fine for the character. Hot Toys simply needed to make the best Anakin figure to date as a DX project with loads of accessories and maybe two different sculpts… two sculpts with sculpted hair.
I don’t know where this rooted hair race is going or whether other companies will jump into the mix, but it’s not something I need or desire for this hobby.
) so I’m all for the least amount of maintenance possible for collectibles.
