Alright guys. Just got my figure. Thought I'd post a quick review. Hope it doesn't open a can of worms though. lol
Overall, the sculpt of the body and head is well done. What really hurts though is with the sculpt being this good, Hot Toys could have nailed this figure, but unfortunately they dropped the ball pretty bad in the end.
As we all know, the paint job is off from the movie. The figure is a bit too bright silver as opposed the blue color in the film. But we all already know this. It's just a matter of whether each individual can accept it.
For me however, the bigger problem is the purple/pinkish hue on the deltoids (diecast part on the side of the upper arms), is too purple/pink and is more noticable than the other parts of the body. The room where I display the figure has decent lighting so the difference in the purple/pink hue on the deltoids to the rest of the body stands out quite a bit when you see it in person. This makes it pretty distracting for me when I look at the figure and it kinda keeps me from enjoying it. This is one issue I think is inexcusable for HT. I have both the Neca and Mcfarlane robo's. And even those cheap $15 to $17 figures at least got the color tone between different parts consistent.
The other issue, which Yankeeyboy already touched upon, is the skin tone around the mouth area is too dark. This for me is also pretty distracting.
Overall, I could have lived with the inaccurate, bright silver paint job if it was "uniform" throughout. But for me personally, the overly purple/pink hue on the deltoids compared to the rest of the body and the dark skin tone for the mouth piece are a bit of a deal breaker for me cause they really distract me from appreciating the figure when looking at it.
I luckily got mine as a gift, but I would have pre-ordered it myself last year either way as some HT figures back then were still selling out on pre-orders. But given the fact that HT is charging $300 for this calling it a diecast figure when only 4 small pieces of it is diecast. And as a result, the diecast deltoid part has a mismatched color to the rest of the figure. I would have preferred HT to make it all plastic and kept the colors more uniform and charged us less money at $259 or so. But if I had the choice I would have probably skipped this figure cause of the flaws and the high price tag for something that doesn't have much diecast pieces.
So yeah, I don't know about some of the people here, but for me, I can't in good conscience call a $300 robot figure with these three flaws and limited diecast parts "figure of the year". But to each his own. The thing that kinda irks me though is this figure had the potential to be awesome if HT at least got the skin tone and the purple hue imbalance corrected (not hard to do). I could have lived with the inaccurate silver paint job. I mean they already got the hard part (head and body sculpt) done well so it's really quite unfortunate.
I think this is one reason why I like the fact HT is now producing a higher quantity of each figure. This gives us a chance to wait and check out in hand production pics first before deciding to buy. Unlike before where we had to just pre-order and make our decisions based on the prototype.
Posted a few pics I took with my phone to try to highlight the purple hue on the deltoids for anyone who's curious. Keep in mind though that the camera didn't really capture the extent of it fully as that imbalance in purple between the delts and the rest of the body and the dark skin tone is actually worse when you see it in person.
There's no point debating about these issues as they're very real. It's just a matter of whether each person can accept it or not. I'm personally a bit let down as I would like to hold HT and $200 to $300 figures to a higher standard. But I'm glad some people here are still enjoying their figure regardless.
)I for one love it, looking forward to the two-pack, bring it on hot toys, bring it on
Good to hear it.
