With respect, this is nonsense. We've seen what Sideshow can actually do when they inject a bit of love and passion into a project. Their recent Thanos for example is as good as any company could have made. Their Iron Giant maquette is superb! And prime 1 regularly make incredibly impressive, and very large statues for less than that amount of money and their production pieces match. I mean their Dog alien is pretty much perfect, it's 1/3 (huge!) and still only $250 more than this maquette. You are right however that Sideshow could be making much better Predators if they wanted to... So why not do it? $1300 is hardly pocket money. They showed with their Wolf LSB (prototype) that they can do good things with the license when they want to. The recent maquettes seem to be a love free side project sadly, they're just okay..
Here's the thing, I love Sideshow and I spend a fortune with them. But there are other players in town now and they mean business with the Alien & Predator licenses. Sideshow need to work hard to keep up. And I hope they can.
But that's my point though. The more you pay a factory, the better they will make your product. This is in regards to quality. Sideshow have always done well with their comic pieces, so I won't compare with Thanos. It's everything else that's hit and miss. Some are a hit, some are a miss.
Prime 1 haven't proven a thing. Wait until that Dog Alien actually ships before you judge the quality on the production piece. Even then, Prime 1 have their own factories. They haven't produced anything from Predator yet to compare, and I've seen Prime 1 statues in person. Yes, some look fantastic, but not all their production pieces are without issues.
This isn't a post defending Sideshow by the way. I've never cared who makes the product I buy. My comment was merely in response to the assumption that 10 years passed = must be better made collectibles due to changes in tech and materials, which I don't think is the case as inflation has also occurred in this time. The cost to make a statue is more expensive now compared to back then, and really, materials have hardly changed. They're still polystone statues.
Yeah, Sideshow had a meeting...
'Well guys we need to keep this around the £1,200 mark or it just won't sell as many as we need'.
'Ok boss. If we leave the Spine Trophy out, drop the pouch, make him a bit skinny, squash his head and play around with the leg armour we'll save at least $800 production costs'.
'Give that man a bonus!!!'
My post was in response to this quote from Python:
Given we've had 10 years of improved materials and techniques, you'd expect the new one to blow the old SWS maquette away. But sadly it's the opposite.
But nice attempt at being funny man. The spine trophy is the EX hand, and as comparison pics with the old Maquette show, he's clearly not skinny, but that's ok, keep peddling that.
Not going to argue these points though as I don't care. My comment was merely in response to the assumption that since 10 years have passed, we now have better tech and materials and thus should get better quality statues, which I don't think is the case since the cost of making them has also increased. Inaccuracies aside, of course.
(* I'm so proud of him *)
