This is not new. Old, old news.
They had a host of problems and finally wound up stopping production on these.
This was a problem with the chroming process on certain batches of these.
Simultaneously there have been significant problems with paint cracking and peeling off months or even a year later. Whether this is because of no primer, poor quality primer or what Silent Surfer describes or a combination of all 3 is unclear.
I bought an Iron Man Bust 1:1, loved it, displayed it proudly for a few months, read the thread on peeling paint, went to inspect mine and sure enough saw the base start cracking.
Got a replacement: shoulder chip.
Game over, got a refund and got out.
Next Iron Man product, Mark VI maquette. Decent paintjob, hand LED out. Returned, waited months of repair. Got a new one, paint chip off the knee. Also very dusty, obvious return from another buyer.
Game over, got refund, got out.
Folks I'm not the most picky person out there. More often than not, I accept poor paint jobs etc as the price you pay for mass produced factory labor.
When you own custom painted garage kits from the hands of Joe Dunaway, Rick Cantu, Saul Alvarez, John Allred, and other paintmasters then your expectations on paint quality from Sideshow is lowered.
These are quality control issues that are about DAMAGE and are unacceptable problems. And frankly the percentage of products affected is disturbingly high.
I basically only buy exclusive Hot Toys from Sideshow now because of this regardless of the type of product they release.
And when they do release something that is a "must buy" I always buy with the full awareness I may have to have it repainted or redone by one of my customizers.
Dennis
