I was intially not interested in getting this set, but managed to find the cowboy one with the horse at a very good price. In-hand it's not too bad, better than most recent Star Ace releases. The horse is pretty good, good detail. The Dean head sculpt is directly taken from the image of him squinting into the distance on the set of Giant. It's an average to decent attempt. It is, however, missing a lot of nuance in the sculpt.
Main issue of mine is that the figure doesn't look like it has a neck, so you have to take the peg out of the neck and have it just sit on top for it to look natural. Leave it on as normal, and it looks ike he's stooping from any angle. The jeans are also way too clean, and the boots do not have any sort of articulation. Aside from that, it's a decent figure. Nice sturdy joints. It does look pretty good with or on the horse. Packaging and artwork on the shipper and box for the most part is quite good. Not a huge fan of the big Dean portrait they opted for the artbox, but the images of the horse, and Dean on the director's chair for each of the shipping boxes, are quite well done.
I will ultimately be parting with the Dean figure and sticking to the Hot Toys version. This being mainly because I want to keep both my Hot Toys Dean's, and this Star Ace one just doesn't do enough to convince me to have a duplicate Giant version.
At this price-tag I think we need more than just a likeness, which is what Star Ace offers. If Hot Toys are charging roughly around $250 now, and Star Ace are asking for $220, then either their quality needs to improve, or their price need to go down. I would say their quality is only at $200 maximum, if not less.
I do wish another company would take on Dean, maybe Blitzway. Would really like a high quality Dean sculpt.
