This is a shot of a team that preordered for the big MLK tournament. Her mom is the team parent (the one who decides how to spend the cash pool), so i wanted to especially get some good shots of her. Any SOOC changes i could have made? (P.S. They wouldn't let me crouch down-they said i wouldn't be able to dive out of the way quick enough if a ball came *Some refs are more strict than others*)

moggymawee.com/2021/07/26/play-arts-kai-final-fantasy-7-r...

So I guess it’s high time I posted about my adventures (or rather misadventures) with the latest Version 2 Cloud figure from Play Arts Kai (aka v2 Cloud PAK).

So as you may already know, I’m a massive Cloud Strife fan! Tekken 3 and Final Fantasy 7 made up most of my childhood after moving to New Zealand, so Hwoarang and Cloud were both my centres during that time.

And naturally, to soothe my collector itch, I was desperate to own any Cloud merch at all – be it a keyring, a badge or even just a poster. But there were none. Afterall, I grew up in little old New Zealand, the secluded island nation far away from all things cool (and luckily also something else less cool in these past 2 years ^^”). All I had was fanart I’d spent hours sketching plastered all over my bedroom walls. Little Mary would’ve never dared to dream for a Cloud plushie or figure.

So imagine my utter shock and excitement when I stumbled across Cloud action figures from Play Arts Kai in the year 2017. By that time, they had already released the Advent Children and the Final Fantasy Remake Cloud. So of course, I insta-bought both. Then they released a limited colour version of Cloud in his iconic FF7 purple attire in 2018 so of course, being the loyal Cloud stan I was, I had to get him too! At that time, I was still blissfully ignorant and fearless of defects so I boldly ordered directly from the US Square Enix store and had it shipped to me from a forwarding company (this essentially voids any claims for refunds/returns in case of defects).

Fortunately, this Cloud arrived mostly perfect (the stand bags at the back came loose, but that’s nothing major). Perhaps the quality control back then was better, because out of the eight Final Fantasy PAKs I bought that year, only Prompto came with glaring defects.

This brings us nicely to my very memorable experience with the latest v2 Cloud PAK. The v2 Cloud looks amazing, he’s impeccable in likeness and aesthetics, and is hands down the best Cloud figure to date. All fantastic news, until you realize the defect rate has gone straight through the roof and you’re now getting completely drenched by rain. Seriously.

My first Cloud I preordered from Amiami came with hideous black dots embedded in the plastic at the front of his hair, so I returned him for a replacement.

Honestly, for a figure that costs $200-300NZD, you shouldn’t have to deal with these sorts of defects. And all this fiasco happened while covid was rife with no vaccines in sight, and international flights were incredibly limited so return postage to Japan was ludicrous. From memory, it cost $120NZD which was essentially over half the cost of the figure itself. Fortunately, Amiami reimbursed this in full, and the replacement figure they later sent me was thankfully perfect.

Now this would’ve been a pretty smooth and happy ending to my v2 Cloud PAK adventures if I’d been satisfied with having just one v2 Cloud. However, the Cloud stan in me itched for more – after all, this was “hands down the best Cloud figure to date” right?! I must have one to keep perfect and dust free in box, and another one out of box for display. Right?! So I proceeded to order ANOTHER v2 Cloud, this time locally from Mighty Ape. I assumed any returns would be much easier and cheaper to arrange.

And this is where the nightmare really begins. The first one from Mighty Ape came with a chipped nose and messy paint defects. Organizing a replacement took needlessly long. There was a lot of back and forth, and responses were often delayed by up to 4-7 days at a time. Finally, my replacement came after over a month? And this one was even worse! He had floating hair, messy lips, loose hips and a loose wrist! No way was I keeping a $290NZD figure like this (Mighty Ape charges more for him ($290NZD) than Amiami ($200NZD) even including international shipping and GST)! So I reached out to Mighty Ape again. I’m certain they were all sick of me by now ^^” that crazy Cloud lady lmao.

Anyway, because it was already a replacement figure they only offered me the option to keep him or return for a refund. I chose to return him and order one from Amiami instead, hoping I would have better luck there. My Prompto with the sexy shoulders also came from Mighty Ape, so I wondered whether they just stock the “bad batch” – either “re-released” ones or from an inferior factory? That’s what I chose to believe anyway, to settle my anxieties about getting yet another defective Cloud from Amiami. To my relief, my fifth and final Cloud was perfect. So that fortunately ended my v2 Cloud saga.

And before you all roll your judgy eyes at me, I must mention that it isn’t just me having all these issues with v2 Cloud. My colleague, another fellow Cloud stan, also had to go through three Cloud figures (all from Amiami) before getting a decent one without significant defects. So between the two of us, we had to go through 8x Clouds to get 3x good ones. That’s like a 60% defect rate! Neither of us had any problems with the previous Cloud PAKs. I owned three Clouds before v2 Cloud and she owned seven, so it’s quite a decent sample size too!

So yes, I can finally rest easy now that I have two good v2 Clouds. This brings my total Cloud PAK count to five! Though after such a sour and stressful experience, I don’t think my heart’s up to purchasing any more PAKs. So unless the next Clouds are super freaking unbelievably amazing, I think I’m fully done collecting these.

I had forgotten to finish this page earlier.

Watercolors didn't work as well as I expected. I need some practising!

Keri Smith: Finish This Book

{Thursday, 6 October 2011 -- 279:365}

These are the rules:

-This promotion is ongoing from the 16th of October until the 21th.

-”Like” Magic Mirror Facebook page:

www.facebook.com/MagicMirrorDolls

-”Like” this post and share it!:

www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=465553850224825&set=n...

-For every social media that you use to share it, you will have one chance to win. The allowed social media are the following: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr. You can have up to 4 participations.

-Come back here and post a reply in this post, adding the links to your shares so I can verify them. And good luck!

These are the prizes:

NOTE: All the discounts apply to basic doll only (Faceup, Bodyblush, Special Customization and Wig are not included)

-If the Magic Mirror facebook page reaches 750 ”Like”: You will have Saoirse OR Siobhan for free in Pink White skin!

-If the Magic Mirror mirror Facebook does not reach 750 ”Like”, the winner still will have a 50% discount when preordering his/her fairy (Of course, you can give up the prize if you do not want it, and more draws will be done until a valid winner is found!)

-If the winner has already submitted a preorder, but the Facebook site didn’t reach 750 ”Like”, he or she still will have a 75% discount to the order.

-If the winner has already made his/her preorder, and the Facebook site reached the 750 ”Like”, he or she can either choose to have the Pink White doll for free, or to have his preordered doll for free instead.

-If the site reaches 1000 ”Like”… it will be a very special surprise for the winner, PLUS the free doll!!

So, let’s share !

I had preordered each of the new wave of Fashionista dolls sight unseen on Amazon. My orders now have photos of them all! A couple of them are also on Barbie.com and I have noticed that those names don't match the Amazon names. Here are the photos for your enjoyment!

Update 5/27/2018: My pre-order was cancelled in April, but she is now in stock and can be ordered.

I was fortunate enough to preorder from the second batch of this amazing Giyu figure before he sold out again. The level of details and quality of these Figuarts Zero figures from Bandai are phenomenal, especially considering how affordable they are. I reckon this Giyu is my favourite figure of him released thus far - even beating out the more expensive ArtFX J Kotobukiya version.

I didn't get Figuarts Zero's first version of Rengoku because I didn't like his face. The second version of him looks immensely better and I preordered one after seeing how amazing my Giyu is.

By far the Rengoku figure I'm most excited about is the Flame Breathing Esoteric Art Ninth Form Rengoku figure from Aniplex. I've already preordered mine and I can't wait to see him!

His official release date is in March 2023, so there will be quite a bit of wait! I hope the actual figure will look just as (or even more!) epic as his promo pics!!

moggymawee.com/2021/07/26/play-arts-kai-final-fantasy-7-r...

So I guess it’s high time I posted about my adventures (or rather misadventures) with the latest Version 2 Cloud figure from Play Arts Kai (aka v2 Cloud PAK).

So as you may already know, I’m a massive Cloud Strife fan! Tekken 3 and Final Fantasy 7 made up most of my childhood after moving to New Zealand, so Hwoarang and Cloud were both my centres during that time.

And naturally, to soothe my collector itch, I was desperate to own any Cloud merch at all – be it a keyring, a badge or even just a poster. But there were none. Afterall, I grew up in little old New Zealand, the secluded island nation far away from all things cool (and luckily also something else less cool in these past 2 years ^^”). All I had was fanart I’d spent hours sketching plastered all over my bedroom walls. Little Mary would’ve never dared to dream for a Cloud plushie or figure.

So imagine my utter shock and excitement when I stumbled across Cloud action figures from Play Arts Kai in the year 2017. By that time, they had already released the Advent Children and the Final Fantasy Remake Cloud. So of course, I insta-bought both. Then they released a limited colour version of Cloud in his iconic FF7 purple attire in 2018 so of course, being the loyal Cloud stan I was, I had to get him too! At that time, I was still blissfully ignorant and fearless of defects so I boldly ordered directly from the US Square Enix store and had it shipped to me from a forwarding company (this essentially voids any claims for refunds/returns in case of defects).

Fortunately, this Cloud arrived mostly perfect (the stand bags at the back came loose, but that’s nothing major). Perhaps the quality control back then was better, because out of the eight Final Fantasy PAKs I bought that year, only Prompto came with glaring defects.

This brings us nicely to my very memorable experience with the latest v2 Cloud PAK. The v2 Cloud looks amazing, he’s impeccable in likeness and aesthetics, and is hands down the best Cloud figure to date. All fantastic news, until you realize the defect rate has gone straight through the roof and you’re now getting completely drenched by rain. Seriously.

My first Cloud I preordered from Amiami came with hideous black dots embedded in the plastic at the front of his hair, so I returned him for a replacement.

Honestly, for a figure that costs $200-300NZD, you shouldn’t have to deal with these sorts of defects. And all this fiasco happened while covid was rife with no vaccines in sight, and international flights were incredibly limited so return postage to Japan was ludicrous. From memory, it cost $120NZD which was essentially over half the cost of the figure itself. Fortunately, Amiami reimbursed this in full, and the replacement figure they later sent me was thankfully perfect.

Now this would’ve been a pretty smooth and happy ending to my v2 Cloud PAK adventures if I’d been satisfied with having just one v2 Cloud. However, the Cloud stan in me itched for more – after all, this was “hands down the best Cloud figure to date” right?! I must have one to keep perfect and dust free in box, and another one out of box for display. Right?! So I proceeded to order ANOTHER v2 Cloud, this time locally from Mighty Ape. I assumed any returns would be much easier and cheaper to arrange.

And this is where the nightmare really begins. The first one from Mighty Ape came with a chipped nose and messy paint defects. Organizing a replacement took needlessly long. There was a lot of back and forth, and responses were often delayed by up to 4-7 days at a time. Finally, my replacement came after over a month? And this one was even worse! He had floating hair, messy lips, loose hips and a loose wrist! No way was I keeping a $290NZD figure like this (Mighty Ape charges more for him ($290NZD) than Amiami ($200NZD) even including international shipping and GST)! So I reached out to Mighty Ape again. I’m certain they were all sick of me by now ^^” that crazy Cloud lady lmao.

Anyway, because it was already a replacement figure they only offered me the option to keep him or return for a refund. I chose to return him and order one from Amiami instead, hoping I would have better luck there. My Prompto with the sexy shoulders also came from Mighty Ape, so I wondered whether they just stock the “bad batch” – either “re-released” ones or from an inferior factory? That’s what I chose to believe anyway, to settle my anxieties about getting yet another defective Cloud from Amiami. To my relief, my fifth and final Cloud was perfect. So that fortunately ended my v2 Cloud saga.

And before you all roll your judgy eyes at me, I must mention that it isn’t just me having all these issues with v2 Cloud. My colleague, another fellow Cloud stan, also had to go through three Cloud figures (all from Amiami) before getting a decent one without significant defects. So between the two of us, we had to go through 8x Clouds to get 3x good ones. That’s like a 60% defect rate! Neither of us had any problems with the previous Cloud PAKs. I owned three Clouds before v2 Cloud and she owned seven, so it’s quite a decent sample size too!

So yes, I can finally rest easy now that I have two good v2 Clouds. This brings my total Cloud PAK count to five! Though after such a sour and stressful experience, I don’t think my heart’s up to purchasing any more PAKs. So unless the next Clouds are super freaking unbelievably amazing, I think I’m fully done collecting these.

I had preordered each of the new wave of Fashionista dolls sight unseen on Amazon. My orders now have photos of them all! A couple of them are also on Barbie.com and I have noticed that those names don't match the Amazon names. Here are the photos for your enjoyment!

Update 5/27/2018: On her Way! She is also in stock and can be ordered!

Friday am.

The line was truly outrageous (like Jem)...

We were limited to one of each style (unless we had more than 14 preordered dolls).

Preordered

Jae Lee's Superman and Wonder Woman

First off sorry to have flooded your Flickr Feed with so many pictures. I cannot believe the amount of detail that went into these particular figures. They are based on the Art by the incomparable Jae Lee, and sculpted beautifully by Jonathan Matthews (who also I believe sculpted the Greg Capullo Designer Series as well). I have never had figures from DC Collectibles that got me so excited since the announcement of Batman The Animated Series.

These figures go so well with the other New 52 especially the other Designer Series by Greg Capullo.

I preordered these on Amazon but when I saw them in person I just knew I had to get them right then and there.

Here are a ton of quick shots of Bijou Elyse for Dolldiva67 !

She is gorgeous! But… Mine needs some attention! There is a lot of fuzz stuck to her hair that will not just blow away, and she has some paint on her nose! I am so very tempted to leave the paint??

(So far of the two upgrades that I preordered, I like Nadja more? When I ordered it was the opposite and I was dying for this Elyse and just happy to have a new Nadja released. I do really love Elyse’s dress, it’s getting some hate but I think it’s a lot of fun!)

Hello fellows, good Day! Here’s some upcoming news from Bel.

It’s been a while since I last updated any news on the upcoming work, please stay with me ! Unfortunately, I have had some rough time with 2 issues – one of it being the vast amount of time to prepare and ship the previous orders ( as you know of ). This is actually a good thing- it made me think. So, I have better ways of handling orders now, and so you don't have to worry about it ! For my dear fans, there’s lots more good updates to give today!!

The second big thing I had to get through was the creation of my next artwork-the Feline Crusader. It is a real challenge to recreate this sneaky, playful iconic girl . I made more than 7 designs before this one you see. Then it comes the 'innovation' I promised myself - I was going to make a BIG thing , and so I made a BIG cat with her. However, I wouldn't know the real challenge was to print on a CAT. More nightmares came. A durable printing on the minifigure's hands and helmet is almost impossible without very costly procedures. The only way seemed to be changing my design. I thoroughly look through different options and I decided to keep it the way I want - but using better ways to handle it- NOW The gloves will be hand-sprayed in metallic color instead of printed on. It is much more durable this way. The helmets will be sprayed in the right color and printed with the help of special equipment. The Cat will be printed with 5 tailor-made clamps.. finally it is working without further challenges.. well I mean for now.

The minifigure is professionally pad-printed on both sides of the torso. The arms are also printed and the fingers & toes receive a metallic-sprayed color treatment. There will be 2 emotions for use with or without a helmet. The CAT is printed on the face as well as 3 sides of the body A Lego Whip will be in the package too.

I can't say enough thank you to all who patiently waited for the Feline Crusader, and the other characters following. You guys are just awesome to give some much confidence and love to support me with all the preorders- even those I have not announced yet ! There is not much I could do - on top of doing my best. So for all who preordered the Feline Crusaders , I will include the 2 limited weapons from my Dark Knight Nightingale ! As for those who participated in the lucky draw - congratulations ! You all have won the prizes too! I will be contacting you one by one soon.

Thank you for my BIG supporters- YOU ARE THE BEST! Your patience would be rewarded !

Just preordered her! Will be awhile before she gets here. I think I need the Batpod...

moggymawee.com/2021/07/26/play-arts-kai-final-fantasy-7-r...

So I guess it’s high time I posted about my adventures (or rather misadventures) with the latest Version 2 Cloud figure from Play Arts Kai (aka v2 Cloud PAK).

So as you may already know, I’m a massive Cloud Strife fan! Tekken 3 and Final Fantasy 7 made up most of my childhood after moving to New Zealand, so Hwoarang and Cloud were both my centres during that time.

And naturally, to soothe my collector itch, I was desperate to own any Cloud merch at all – be it a keyring, a badge or even just a poster. But there were none. Afterall, I grew up in little old New Zealand, the secluded island nation far away from all things cool (and luckily also something else less cool in these past 2 years ^^”). All I had was fanart I’d spent hours sketching plastered all over my bedroom walls. Little Mary would’ve never dared to dream for a Cloud plushie or figure.

So imagine my utter shock and excitement when I stumbled across Cloud action figures from Play Arts Kai in the year 2017. By that time, they had already released the Advent Children and the Final Fantasy Remake Cloud. So of course, I insta-bought both. Then they released a limited colour version of Cloud in his iconic FF7 purple attire in 2018 so of course, being the loyal Cloud stan I was, I had to get him too! At that time, I was still blissfully ignorant and fearless of defects so I boldly ordered directly from the US Square Enix store and had it shipped to me from a forwarding company (this essentially voids any claims for refunds/returns in case of defects).

Fortunately, this Cloud arrived mostly perfect (the stand bags at the back came loose, but that’s nothing major). Perhaps the quality control back then was better, because out of the eight Final Fantasy PAKs I bought that year, only Prompto came with glaring defects.

This brings us nicely to my very memorable experience with the latest v2 Cloud PAK. The v2 Cloud looks amazing, he’s impeccable in likeness and aesthetics, and is hands down the best Cloud figure to date. All fantastic news, until you realize the defect rate has gone straight through the roof and you’re now getting completely drenched by rain. Seriously.

My first Cloud I preordered from Amiami came with hideous black dots embedded in the plastic at the front of his hair, so I returned him for a replacement.

Honestly, for a figure that costs $200-300NZD, you shouldn’t have to deal with these sorts of defects. And all this fiasco happened while covid was rife with no vaccines in sight, and international flights were incredibly limited so return postage to Japan was ludicrous. From memory, it cost $120NZD which was essentially over half the cost of the figure itself. Fortunately, Amiami reimbursed this in full, and the replacement figure they later sent me was thankfully perfect.

Now this would’ve been a pretty smooth and happy ending to my v2 Cloud PAK adventures if I’d been satisfied with having just one v2 Cloud. However, the Cloud stan in me itched for more – after all, this was “hands down the best Cloud figure to date” right?! I must have one to keep perfect and dust free in box, and another one out of box for display. Right?! So I proceeded to order ANOTHER v2 Cloud, this time locally from Mighty Ape. I assumed any returns would be much easier and cheaper to arrange.

And this is where the nightmare really begins. The first one from Mighty Ape came with a chipped nose and messy paint defects. Organizing a replacement took needlessly long. There was a lot of back and forth, and responses were often delayed by up to 4-7 days at a time. Finally, my replacement came after over a month? And this one was even worse! He had floating hair, messy lips, loose hips and a loose wrist! No way was I keeping a $290NZD figure like this (Mighty Ape charges more for him ($290NZD) than Amiami ($200NZD) even including international shipping and GST)! So I reached out to Mighty Ape again. I’m certain they were all sick of me by now ^^” that crazy Cloud lady lmao.

Anyway, because it was already a replacement figure they only offered me the option to keep him or return for a refund. I chose to return him and order one from Amiami instead, hoping I would have better luck there. My Prompto with the sexy shoulders also came from Mighty Ape, so I wondered whether they just stock the “bad batch” – either “re-released” ones or from an inferior factory? That’s what I chose to believe anyway, to settle my anxieties about getting yet another defective Cloud from Amiami. To my relief, my fifth and final Cloud was perfect. So that fortunately ended my v2 Cloud saga.

And before you all roll your judgy eyes at me, I must mention that it isn’t just me having all these issues with v2 Cloud. My colleague, another fellow Cloud stan, also had to go through three Cloud figures (all from Amiami) before getting a decent one without significant defects. So between the two of us, we had to go through 8x Clouds to get 3x good ones. That’s like a 60% defect rate! Neither of us had any problems with the previous Cloud PAKs. I owned three Clouds before v2 Cloud and she owned seven, so it’s quite a decent sample size too!

So yes, I can finally rest easy now that I have two good v2 Clouds. This brings my total Cloud PAK count to five! Though after such a sour and stressful experience, I don’t think my heart’s up to purchasing any more PAKs. So unless the next Clouds are super freaking unbelievably amazing, I think I’m fully done collecting these.

moggymawee.com/2021/07/26/play-arts-kai-final-fantasy-7-r...

So I guess it’s high time I posted about my adventures (or rather misadventures) with the latest Version 2 Cloud figure from Play Arts Kai (aka v2 Cloud PAK).

So as you may already know, I’m a massive Cloud Strife fan! Tekken 3 and Final Fantasy 7 made up most of my childhood after moving to New Zealand, so Hwoarang and Cloud were both my centres during that time.

And naturally, to soothe my collector itch, I was desperate to own any Cloud merch at all – be it a keyring, a badge or even just a poster. But there were none. Afterall, I grew up in little old New Zealand, the secluded island nation far away from all things cool (and luckily also something else less cool in these past 2 years ^^”). All I had was fanart I’d spent hours sketching plastered all over my bedroom walls. Little Mary would’ve never dared to dream for a Cloud plushie or figure.

So imagine my utter shock and excitement when I stumbled across Cloud action figures from Play Arts Kai in the year 2017. By that time, they had already released the Advent Children and the Final Fantasy Remake Cloud. So of course, I insta-bought both. Then they released a limited colour version of Cloud in his iconic FF7 purple attire in 2018 so of course, being the loyal Cloud stan I was, I had to get him too! At that time, I was still blissfully ignorant and fearless of defects so I boldly ordered directly from the US Square Enix store and had it shipped to me from a forwarding company (this essentially voids any claims for refunds/returns in case of defects).

Fortunately, this Cloud arrived mostly perfect (the stand bags at the back came loose, but that’s nothing major). Perhaps the quality control back then was better, because out of the eight Final Fantasy PAKs I bought that year, only Prompto came with glaring defects.

This brings us nicely to my very memorable experience with the latest v2 Cloud PAK. The v2 Cloud looks amazing, he’s impeccable in likeness and aesthetics, and is hands down the best Cloud figure to date. All fantastic news, until you realize the defect rate has gone straight through the roof and you’re now getting completely drenched by rain. Seriously.

My first Cloud I preordered from Amiami came with hideous black dots embedded in the plastic at the front of his hair, so I returned him for a replacement.

Honestly, for a figure that costs $200-300NZD, you shouldn’t have to deal with these sorts of defects. And all this fiasco happened while covid was rife with no vaccines in sight, and international flights were incredibly limited so return postage to Japan was ludicrous. From memory, it cost $120NZD which was essentially over half the cost of the figure itself. Fortunately, Amiami reimbursed this in full, and the replacement figure they later sent me was thankfully perfect.

Now this would’ve been a pretty smooth and happy ending to my v2 Cloud PAK adventures if I’d been satisfied with having just one v2 Cloud. However, the Cloud stan in me itched for more – after all, this was “hands down the best Cloud figure to date” right?! I must have one to keep perfect and dust free in box, and another one out of box for display. Right?! So I proceeded to order ANOTHER v2 Cloud, this time locally from Mighty Ape. I assumed any returns would be much easier and cheaper to arrange.

And this is where the nightmare really begins. The first one from Mighty Ape came with a chipped nose and messy paint defects. Organizing a replacement took needlessly long. There was a lot of back and forth, and responses were often delayed by up to 4-7 days at a time. Finally, my replacement came after over a month? And this one was even worse! He had floating hair, messy lips, loose hips and a loose wrist! No way was I keeping a $290NZD figure like this (Mighty Ape charges more for him ($290NZD) than Amiami ($200NZD) even including international shipping and GST)! So I reached out to Mighty Ape again. I’m certain they were all sick of me by now ^^” that crazy Cloud lady lmao.

Anyway, because it was already a replacement figure they only offered me the option to keep him or return for a refund. I chose to return him and order one from Amiami instead, hoping I would have better luck there. My Prompto with the sexy shoulders also came from Mighty Ape, so I wondered whether they just stock the “bad batch” – either “re-released” ones or from an inferior factory? That’s what I chose to believe anyway, to settle my anxieties about getting yet another defective Cloud from Amiami. To my relief, my fifth and final Cloud was perfect. So that fortunately ended my v2 Cloud saga.

And before you all roll your judgy eyes at me, I must mention that it isn’t just me having all these issues with v2 Cloud. My colleague, another fellow Cloud stan, also had to go through three Cloud figures (all from Amiami) before getting a decent one without significant defects. So between the two of us, we had to go through 8x Clouds to get 3x good ones. That’s like a 60% defect rate! Neither of us had any problems with the previous Cloud PAKs. I owned three Clouds before v2 Cloud and she owned seven, so it’s quite a decent sample size too!

So yes, I can finally rest easy now that I have two good v2 Clouds. This brings my total Cloud PAK count to five! Though after such a sour and stressful experience, I don’t think my heart’s up to purchasing any more PAKs. So unless the next Clouds are super freaking unbelievably amazing, I think I’m fully done collecting these.

moggymawee.com/2021/07/26/play-arts-kai-final-fantasy-7-r...

So I guess it’s high time I posted about my adventures (or rather misadventures) with the latest Version 2 Cloud figure from Play Arts Kai (aka v2 Cloud PAK).

So as you may already know, I’m a massive Cloud Strife fan! Tekken 3 and Final Fantasy 7 made up most of my childhood after moving to New Zealand, so Hwoarang and Cloud were both my centres during that time.

And naturally, to soothe my collector itch, I was desperate to own any Cloud merch at all – be it a keyring, a badge or even just a poster. But there were none. Afterall, I grew up in little old New Zealand, the secluded island nation far away from all things cool (and luckily also something else less cool in these past 2 years ^^”). All I had was fanart I’d spent hours sketching plastered all over my bedroom walls. Little Mary would’ve never dared to dream for a Cloud plushie or figure.

So imagine my utter shock and excitement when I stumbled across Cloud action figures from Play Arts Kai in the year 2017. By that time, they had already released the Advent Children and the Final Fantasy Remake Cloud. So of course, I insta-bought both. Then they released a limited colour version of Cloud in his iconic FF7 purple attire in 2018 so of course, being the loyal Cloud stan I was, I had to get him too! At that time, I was still blissfully ignorant and fearless of defects so I boldly ordered directly from the US Square Enix store and had it shipped to me from a forwarding company (this essentially voids any claims for refunds/returns in case of defects).

Fortunately, this Cloud arrived mostly perfect (the stand bags at the back came loose, but that’s nothing major). Perhaps the quality control back then was better, because out of the eight Final Fantasy PAKs I bought that year, only Prompto came with glaring defects.

This brings us nicely to my very memorable experience with the latest v2 Cloud PAK. The v2 Cloud looks amazing, he’s impeccable in likeness and aesthetics, and is hands down the best Cloud figure to date. All fantastic news, until you realize the defect rate has gone straight through the roof and you’re now getting completely drenched by rain. Seriously.

My first Cloud I preordered from Amiami came with hideous black dots embedded in the plastic at the front of his hair, so I returned him for a replacement.

Honestly, for a figure that costs $200-300NZD, you shouldn’t have to deal with these sorts of defects. And all this fiasco happened while covid was rife with no vaccines in sight, and international flights were incredibly limited so return postage to Japan was ludicrous. From memory, it cost $120NZD which was essentially over half the cost of the figure itself. Fortunately, Amiami reimbursed this in full, and the replacement figure they later sent me was thankfully perfect.

Now this would’ve been a pretty smooth and happy ending to my v2 Cloud PAK adventures if I’d been satisfied with having just one v2 Cloud. However, the Cloud stan in me itched for more – after all, this was “hands down the best Cloud figure to date” right?! I must have one to keep perfect and dust free in box, and another one out of box for display. Right?! So I proceeded to order ANOTHER v2 Cloud, this time locally from Mighty Ape. I assumed any returns would be much easier and cheaper to arrange.

And this is where the nightmare really begins. The first one from Mighty Ape came with a chipped nose and messy paint defects. Organizing a replacement took needlessly long. There was a lot of back and forth, and responses were often delayed by up to 4-7 days at a time. Finally, my replacement came after over a month? And this one was even worse! He had floating hair, messy lips, loose hips and a loose wrist! No way was I keeping a $290NZD figure like this (Mighty Ape charges more for him ($290NZD) than Amiami ($200NZD) even including international shipping and GST)! So I reached out to Mighty Ape again. I’m certain they were all sick of me by now ^^” that crazy Cloud lady lmao.

Anyway, because it was already a replacement figure they only offered me the option to keep him or return for a refund. I chose to return him and order one from Amiami instead, hoping I would have better luck there. My Prompto with the sexy shoulders also came from Mighty Ape, so I wondered whether they just stock the “bad batch” – either “re-released” ones or from an inferior factory? That’s what I chose to believe anyway, to settle my anxieties about getting yet another defective Cloud from Amiami. To my relief, my fifth and final Cloud was perfect. So that fortunately ended my v2 Cloud saga.

And before you all roll your judgy eyes at me, I must mention that it isn’t just me having all these issues with v2 Cloud. My colleague, another fellow Cloud stan, also had to go through three Cloud figures (all from Amiami) before getting a decent one without significant defects. So between the two of us, we had to go through 8x Clouds to get 3x good ones. That’s like a 60% defect rate! Neither of us had any problems with the previous Cloud PAKs. I owned three Clouds before v2 Cloud and she owned seven, so it’s quite a decent sample size too!

So yes, I can finally rest easy now that I have two good v2 Clouds. This brings my total Cloud PAK count to five! Though after such a sour and stressful experience, I don’t think my heart’s up to purchasing any more PAKs. So unless the next Clouds are super freaking unbelievably amazing, I think I’m fully done collecting these.

So the Integrity Toys preorder I made well over a month ago finally came today, and it was an interesting insight to the IT pre ordering process via their direct shop. I paid my deposit while ordering an Integrity Toys Dynamite girls body which processed the order fine and things were done as expected.

When I had to pay off the rest, the W Club sent me a direct link to the body listing for the Homme body, and while they asked me nicely not to pay for more bodies than I preordered I do wonder what would have happened if I added like 5 Homme bodies to my cart and only paid $15 for each of them lol.

But this method was good cuz while paying off the rest of this preorder I had the option to add other things to my order so it could be shipped together. And the shipping for *one* body was pretty whack, so I decided to add another Dynamite girl body to my order since it’s still half off on the direct store and the shipping still remained the same.

IT Direct advertises this body as being A-Tone but the packaging it came in was labelled skin tone “Black” which kind of sucks cuz black is a shade lighter than A-Tone but now I can better body match and utilise Integrity Terms.

Surprisingly the Homme has really different packaging to previous Homme replacement bodies, this time it saying it’s the version 1.0 body which I guess means the next round of Hommes will have the disassembly feature.

ANYWAY I intended to get the Hungarian skintone body for one of my Collector Ken dolls cuz it’s a decent match to the Mattel LA Tan, but in the waiting time I received my Francisco Leon head and I rather him on an IT body than not. It’s not a match but between the Hungarian Skin Tone and the Light Honey skin tone (which matches the Mattel Afra skin tone) I rather his body be too light than too dark.

Also Malibu Christie got a better body again lol.

Plus my Phicen doll dongers came today in a small package but I’m wondering how to conduct a review….

We love Spy x Family! My daughter especially loves the series, this is actually her figure of Anya & Bond that she received for Christmas this year. I actually don't have any Spy x Family stuff myself because the kid has so many of the figures already except the Volks Yor Dollfie Dream and the Volks Anya that I have preordered.

So, somehow despite paying extra for EMS shipping from Singapore, I still managed to get my MP57 after everyone who preordered in the US did. Needless to say I'm not exactly thrilled with the outcome of this.

MP57 is of course Skyfire/Jetfire, and is the most recently reelased figure in the Masterpiece line up. After seeing the pretty good job that Hasbro/Takara did on the Siege version, I figured that this figure would just be that one, but with much better production values.

Turns out I'm only half right.

Being in MP scale, Jetfire is huge. The box is 20.5 inches long, and is basically the entire length of the Jet mode. Photos have put the Jet mode at the same length as the combined Convoy/Optimus Prime 3.0 with its trailer attached.

Of course, the character mass shifts during transformation to result in a robot mode that is canonically twice as tall as Convoy, but in Jet mode is a flying fortress capable of troop transport. To show this side of things, the set comes with three mini figures - Prime, Wheeljack, and Jazz. Not sure why specifically these three, but that's what they chose..

The mini figures are actually decently articulated, with no articulation on the main torso whatsoever and very basic arms and legs. Which is normally fine (and expected) for figures of this size, but I REALLY thing they should have either given Jezz wrists of maybe considered the awkwardness of how things look with his hands fused like that.

Otherwise, accessories include two additional faces, a battle mask, his rifle, two thruster effects, Decepticon/Blank chest plate and the same Base/Stand that came with the Seekers and Dinobot,

Jet mode features landing gear that are manually operated (I say this because I remember the original G1 toy featuring spring mounted goodness) and there are various compartments you can open up for the mini figures to fit into/use, specifically the cockpit, under the fuselage, in the jetpack, and in the red pods on the lower legs. The pods are also accessible in robot mode should you so wish.

Being an updated G1 toy, this toy can assume the infamous Gerwalk mode that was the result of repurposing a Robotech toy. I honestly can't recall it actually being used in the show, but then again I can't remember many things.

Gerwalk mode can be achieved with or without the arms deployed, but of course the process is a bit more involved than back in the day. In order to make Gerwalk mode a bit more stable, the figure has die cast metal hips that provide additional support for the legs.

While yes, you can actually put the figure in Gerwalk without the support, for your own sanity you're probably going to want to do it, especially if you're displaying it in said mode for a longer period of time.

Transformation into robot mode is for the most part straight forward. MOST part. When you get to the backpack though, you're likely going to want to throw the figure out the window. The whole shifting mechanism is based on sliding panels, which are notoriously bad because of misalignment issues and just general friction. Couple with that some questionable QC and you've got a very frustrating time and getting things to shift and hold together.

The QC issues don't appear to be limited to the backpack as I have had a somewhat difficult time getting the shoulders to slot into their tab properly. I've also got a loose joint on one of my wings, though fortunately that doesn't really affect much. Getting the various accessories into the backpack cavity was also a bit of a challenge due to fit issues. I also found that the heels had to be put in just the right position for it to fold out correctly.

The resulting robot is tall, though when compared to other figures it's not as excessively large in comparison as comparing vehicle modes The goal was G1 accuracy, and you have to admit they did a bang up job from that respect. Proportions were always wonky so no criticisms from me in that regard.

Due to the weight of the figure, the legs are pretty much all ratcheting joints. Which is great from stability perspective, but not that great from an actual posing perspective. The actual hip joints are strong enough for standing robot mode, but the legs will splay out in Gerwalk mode. With the "ab crunch" hip joints deployed, the hips CAN be strong enough, but as always, test and observe. Actual range of motion is pretty typical, and the waist has flaps so you can move the legs out to the side.

However, it should be stated that the figure at least can stand up. My Siege figure has some issues with a loose hip, so it's either stand up straight or do the splits.

The rest of the body is.. pretty standard, really. There's no waist joint, and the shoulders technically are standard shoulders - but because there are additional flaps needed to move the shoulder in place, you technically have Butterfly Joint-type range of motion, but yeah, it looks weird. Elbows are single jointed but you're able to maximize range of motion. Hands are the typical MP hands with semi-fixed positions. The head can actually pull up a bit for additional range of motion

In general, you're probably not doing any dynamic battle poses without the stand, and even then you're doing them with the figure facing forward because there's only so much you can do laterally.

Speaking of heads, the facial expressions are alright, and the battle mask appears to be useable with or without an underlying face (though I think it fits better without the face under, so that might just be me forcing the thing on). It attaches with a magnet, so the grip is just the right amount to hold it in place. The faces, on the other hand, are friction based and can be a royal pain to get on and off. The other head gimmick to mention is in the head there's a meter of some sort. I don't remember the purpose of this, but I think it had to do with his changing of allegiances between Autobot and Decepticon (Jetfire was a scientist associate of Starscream).

So there you have it. Was it worth the wait? Ehhh.. I mean, it's not as bad as I thought it would be, but it turns out the lack of waist was my smallest concern. It just feels to me like the QC guys dropped the ball, because if they can get smaller figures to tab and slot n perfectly, there's no reason a figure that is at least double that size can't get it right. I mean, the new Seekers are much more complicated transformation wise and I don't have any problems like I do with Jetfire... though I guess the weak hips on the seekers is a problem I avoid here.

I think overall, though, unless you're looking specifically for a G1 styled Jetfire, you should probably consider the Siege figure, especially if you get one that doesn't have joint issues. It's like 1/3 the price, about the same size, and is significantly less frustrating to deal with.

AKA "a photo of things that happen to be on my desk last night". ^^;

I had preordered this book on Amazon so I got it the day after the release date which was awesome. I really love "Hark! A Vagrant" so it's nice to have it in book form where I can force my husband to read and enjoy it. ^_^

If you don't know Kate Beaton and "Hark! A Vagrant", you are missing out! Go check out her website and just buy the book! You will not regret it. People will see it on your bookshelves and know that you are awesome and smart and have good taste in humor and comics. :3

moggymawee.com/2021/07/26/play-arts-kai-final-fantasy-7-r...

So I guess it’s high time I posted about my adventures (or rather misadventures) with the latest Version 2 Cloud figure from Play Arts Kai (aka v2 Cloud PAK).

So as you may already know, I’m a massive Cloud Strife fan! Tekken 3 and Final Fantasy 7 made up most of my childhood after moving to New Zealand, so Hwoarang and Cloud were both my centres during that time.

And naturally, to soothe my collector itch, I was desperate to own any Cloud merch at all – be it a keyring, a badge or even just a poster. But there were none. Afterall, I grew up in little old New Zealand, the secluded island nation far away from all things cool (and luckily also something else less cool in these past 2 years ^^”). All I had was fanart I’d spent hours sketching plastered all over my bedroom walls. Little Mary would’ve never dared to dream for a Cloud plushie or figure.

So imagine my utter shock and excitement when I stumbled across Cloud action figures from Play Arts Kai in the year 2017. By that time, they had already released the Advent Children and the Final Fantasy Remake Cloud. So of course, I insta-bought both. Then they released a limited colour version of Cloud in his iconic FF7 purple attire in 2018 so of course, being the loyal Cloud stan I was, I had to get him too! At that time, I was still blissfully ignorant and fearless of defects so I boldly ordered directly from the US Square Enix store and had it shipped to me from a forwarding company (this essentially voids any claims for refunds/returns in case of defects).

Fortunately, this Cloud arrived mostly perfect (the stand bags at the back came loose, but that’s nothing major). Perhaps the quality control back then was better, because out of the eight Final Fantasy PAKs I bought that year, only Prompto came with glaring defects.

This brings us nicely to my very memorable experience with the latest v2 Cloud PAK. The v2 Cloud looks amazing, he’s impeccable in likeness and aesthetics, and is hands down the best Cloud figure to date. All fantastic news, until you realize the defect rate has gone straight through the roof and you’re now getting completely drenched by rain. Seriously.

My first Cloud I preordered from Amiami came with hideous black dots embedded in the plastic at the front of his hair, so I returned him for a replacement.

Honestly, for a figure that costs $200-300NZD, you shouldn’t have to deal with these sorts of defects. And all this fiasco happened while covid was rife with no vaccines in sight, and international flights were incredibly limited so return postage to Japan was ludicrous. From memory, it cost $120NZD which was essentially over half the cost of the figure itself. Fortunately, Amiami reimbursed this in full, and the replacement figure they later sent me was thankfully perfect.

Now this would’ve been a pretty smooth and happy ending to my v2 Cloud PAK adventures if I’d been satisfied with having just one v2 Cloud. However, the Cloud stan in me itched for more – after all, this was “hands down the best Cloud figure to date” right?! I must have one to keep perfect and dust free in box, and another one out of box for display. Right?! So I proceeded to order ANOTHER v2 Cloud, this time locally from Mighty Ape. I assumed any returns would be much easier and cheaper to arrange.

And this is where the nightmare really begins. The first one from Mighty Ape came with a chipped nose and messy paint defects. Organizing a replacement took needlessly long. There was a lot of back and forth, and responses were often delayed by up to 4-7 days at a time. Finally, my replacement came after over a month? And this one was even worse! He had floating hair, messy lips, loose hips and a loose wrist! No way was I keeping a $290NZD figure like this (Mighty Ape charges more for him ($290NZD) than Amiami ($200NZD) even including international shipping and GST)! So I reached out to Mighty Ape again. I’m certain they were all sick of me by now ^^” that crazy Cloud lady lmao.

Anyway, because it was already a replacement figure they only offered me the option to keep him or return for a refund. I chose to return him and order one from Amiami instead, hoping I would have better luck there. My Prompto with the sexy shoulders also came from Mighty Ape, so I wondered whether they just stock the “bad batch” – either “re-released” ones or from an inferior factory? That’s what I chose to believe anyway, to settle my anxieties about getting yet another defective Cloud from Amiami. To my relief, my fifth and final Cloud was perfect. So that fortunately ended my v2 Cloud saga.

And before you all roll your judgy eyes at me, I must mention that it isn’t just me having all these issues with v2 Cloud. My colleague, another fellow Cloud stan, also had to go through three Cloud figures (all from Amiami) before getting a decent one without significant defects. So between the two of us, we had to go through 8x Clouds to get 3x good ones. That’s like a 60% defect rate! Neither of us had any problems with the previous Cloud PAKs. I owned three Clouds before v2 Cloud and she owned seven, so it’s quite a decent sample size too!

So yes, I can finally rest easy now that I have two good v2 Clouds. This brings my total Cloud PAK count to five! Though after such a sour and stressful experience, I don’t think my heart’s up to purchasing any more PAKs. So unless the next Clouds are super freaking unbelievably amazing, I think I’m fully done collecting these.

I had preordered each of the new wave of Fashionista dolls sight unseen on Amazon. My orders now have photos of them all! A couple of them are also on Barbie.com and I have noticed that those names don't match the Amazon names. Here are the photos for your enjoyment!

Update 5/27/2018: On her Way! She is also in stock and can be ordered!

The Limited Edition Ariel and Eric Doll Set, #12 of 6000, in their display case, with the clear acrylic cover removed. None of the factory restraints have been removed, but I have cleaned up Ariel's face a bit, and cut off a loose thread from her blouse. Photographed using built-in camera flash.

My pre-ordered Ariel and Eric Doll Set, from the Disney Fairytale Designer Collection. It arrived on October 15, 2013, and I was thrilled to see that they are numbered #012 of 6000! It matches the number of the other doll sets in the pre-order, except that Snow White and the Prince is #4508 of 6000. There are some slight scratches on the gold nameplate and on the acrylic cover of the display case, but they are very minor, and don't diminish the look of the set. Ariel's head is posed a bit awkwardly, but I'll see if I can adjust it a bit without undoing any of the shipping restraints. There is also a loose thread hanging from the left sleeve of Ariel's blouse. Otherwise, Ariel and Eric look very beautiful, and in perfect shape. I'm so happy that I have them after failing to get them in the in-store raffle earlier in the day.

I'm not going to debox the dolls in this set, but I am going to take photos of it boxed, with the cover sleeve off, and with the clear acrylic cover off, to show off the dolls as much as possible without actually removing them from their factory restraints.

Ariel and Eric Doll Set

Disney Fairytale Designer Collection

US Disney Store

Release In-Store: October 15, 2013

Release Online: October 16, 2013 (at 12 AM PDT)

Sold Out Online: October 16, 2013 (by 12:15 AM)

Pre-ordered at the D23 Expo, August 9, 2013

Received October 15, 2013.

#12 of 6000

Product information from the US Disney Store website:

Ariel and Prince Eric Doll Set - Disney Fairytale Designer Collection

$129.95

Item No. 6070040900891P

Above the sea

The red-headed Ariel gets her wish to be out of the sea and with her handsome prince, Eric, in this pair of limited-edition dolls. Part of the Disney Fairytale Designer Collection, they feature elegantly detailed costumes.

Magic in the details...

Please Note: Each Guest will be limited to ordering a maximum of one of this item per order.

As part of the Disney Fairytale Designer Collection this pair of Ariel and Prince Eric dolls were carefully crafted by artists inspired by Disney's 1989 movie The Little Mermaid. The Disney Princess and handsome Prince have been reimagined in exquisite detail with these limited edition dolls. Brought to life with thoughtful attention, they uniquely capture the essence of the fairytale couple, creating a one of a kind set that will be a treasured keepsake of collectors, Disney fans, and every princess at heart!

•Global Limited Editon of 6000

•Includes Certificate of Authenticity

•Ariel features her signature red curls tied back with a blue satin bow

•Rooted eyelashes

•Lacey off-shoulder neckline

•Satin and velvet bodice with embroidery and rhinestone accents

•Embroidered taffeta overlay with printed inset hemmed with lace trim at the bottom

•Prince Eric features billowy satin shirt with embroidered detailing

•Crimson sash, belt and matching boots

•Dolls sold in a special keepsake display case with intricate details on the base, including a golden plate with the name of Ariel and Eric

•Includes special Disney Fairytale Designer Collection Gift Bag

•Part of the Disney Fairytale Designer Collection

* Intended for adult collectors -- Not a child's toy.

The bare necessities

•Plastic / polyester

•Ariel: 11 1/2'' H

•Prince Eric: 12'' H

•Imported

I preordered this Hot Toys Movie Masterpiece action figure of Marlon Brando as don Vito Corleone from the Godfather ages ago, but it didn't arrive until now. However, good things come for those who wait and this figure has really lived up to the expectations.

The chair is amazing, authentic to last detail and has real upholstering (I assumed it to be plastic).

I preordered this Hot Toys Movie Masterpiece action figure of Marlon Brando as don Vito Corleone from the Godfather ages ago, but it didn't arrive until now. However, good things come for those who wait and this figure has really lived up to the expectations.

The chair is amazing, authentic to last detail and has real upholstering (I assumed it to be plastic).

So, somehow despite paying extra for EMS shipping from Singapore, I still managed to get my MP57 after everyone who preordered in the US did. Needless to say I'm not exactly thrilled with the outcome of this.

MP57 is of course Skyfire/Jetfire, and is the most recently reelased figure in the Masterpiece line up. After seeing the pretty good job that Hasbro/Takara did on the Siege version, I figured that this figure would just be that one, but with much better production values.

Turns out I'm only half right.

Being in MP scale, Jetfire is huge. The box is 20.5 inches long, and is basically the entire length of the Jet mode. Photos have put the Jet mode at the same length as the combined Convoy/Optimus Prime 3.0 with its trailer attached.

Of course, the character mass shifts during transformation to result in a robot mode that is canonically twice as tall as Convoy, but in Jet mode is a flying fortress capable of troop transport. To show this side of things, the set comes with three mini figures - Prime, Wheeljack, and Jazz. Not sure why specifically these three, but that's what they chose..

The mini figures are actually decently articulated, with no articulation on the main torso whatsoever and very basic arms and legs. Which is normally fine (and expected) for figures of this size, but I REALLY thing they should have either given Jezz wrists of maybe considered the awkwardness of how things look with his hands fused like that.

Otherwise, accessories include two additional faces, a battle mask, his rifle, two thruster effects, Decepticon/Blank chest plate and the same Base/Stand that came with the Seekers and Dinobot,

Jet mode features landing gear that are manually operated (I say this because I remember the original G1 toy featuring spring mounted goodness) and there are various compartments you can open up for the mini figures to fit into/use, specifically the cockpit, under the fuselage, in the jetpack, and in the red pods on the lower legs. The pods are also accessible in robot mode should you so wish.

Being an updated G1 toy, this toy can assume the infamous Gerwalk mode that was the result of repurposing a Robotech toy. I honestly can't recall it actually being used in the show, but then again I can't remember many things.

Gerwalk mode can be achieved with or without the arms deployed, but of course the process is a bit more involved than back in the day. In order to make Gerwalk mode a bit more stable, the figure has die cast metal hips that provide additional support for the legs.

While yes, you can actually put the figure in Gerwalk without the support, for your own sanity you're probably going to want to do it, especially if you're displaying it in said mode for a longer period of time.

Transformation into robot mode is for the most part straight forward. MOST part. When you get to the backpack though, you're likely going to want to throw the figure out the window. The whole shifting mechanism is based on sliding panels, which are notoriously bad because of misalignment issues and just general friction. Couple with that some questionable QC and you've got a very frustrating time and getting things to shift and hold together.

The QC issues don't appear to be limited to the backpack as I have had a somewhat difficult time getting the shoulders to slot into their tab properly. I've also got a loose joint on one of my wings, though fortunately that doesn't really affect much. Getting the various accessories into the backpack cavity was also a bit of a challenge due to fit issues. I also found that the heels had to be put in just the right position for it to fold out correctly.

The resulting robot is tall, though when compared to other figures it's not as excessively large in comparison as comparing vehicle modes The goal was G1 accuracy, and you have to admit they did a bang up job from that respect. Proportions were always wonky so no criticisms from me in that regard.

Due to the weight of the figure, the legs are pretty much all ratcheting joints. Which is great from stability perspective, but not that great from an actual posing perspective. The actual hip joints are strong enough for standing robot mode, but the legs will splay out in Gerwalk mode. With the "ab crunch" hip joints deployed, the hips CAN be strong enough, but as always, test and observe. Actual range of motion is pretty typical, and the waist has flaps so you can move the legs out to the side.

However, it should be stated that the figure at least can stand up. My Siege figure has some issues with a loose hip, so it's either stand up straight or do the splits.

The rest of the body is.. pretty standard, really. There's no waist joint, and the shoulders technically are standard shoulders - but because there are additional flaps needed to move the shoulder in place, you technically have Butterfly Joint-type range of motion, but yeah, it looks weird. Elbows are single jointed but you're able to maximize range of motion. Hands are the typical MP hands with semi-fixed positions. The head can actually pull up a bit for additional range of motion

In general, you're probably not doing any dynamic battle poses without the stand, and even then you're doing them with the figure facing forward because there's only so much you can do laterally.

Speaking of heads, the facial expressions are alright, and the battle mask appears to be useable with or without an underlying face (though I think it fits better without the face under, so that might just be me forcing the thing on). It attaches with a magnet, so the grip is just the right amount to hold it in place. The faces, on the other hand, are friction based and can be a royal pain to get on and off. The other head gimmick to mention is in the head there's a meter of some sort. I don't remember the purpose of this, but I think it had to do with his changing of allegiances between Autobot and Decepticon (Jetfire was a scientist associate of Starscream).

So there you have it. Was it worth the wait? Ehhh.. I mean, it's not as bad as I thought it would be, but it turns out the lack of waist was my smallest concern. It just feels to me like the QC guys dropped the ball, because if they can get smaller figures to tab and slot n perfectly, there's no reason a figure that is at least double that size can't get it right. I mean, the new Seekers are much more complicated transformation wise and I don't have any problems like I do with Jetfire... though I guess the weak hips on the seekers is a problem I avoid here.

I think overall, though, unless you're looking specifically for a G1 styled Jetfire, you should probably consider the Siege figure, especially if you get one that doesn't have joint issues. It's like 1/3 the price, about the same size, and is significantly less frustrating to deal with.

Hello again folks, and welcome to another entry into the journal, as it were. It's now the beginning of March 2020 and we are about two months away from what I predict will be the "Endgame" for MCU Widow Fans, the solo Black Widow movie. If you've been keeping up, you'll probably know I'm kind of a fan myself, and as such would naturally keep abreast of any merch pickups.

Strangely, as of this point, my usual import brands haven't announced anything from the upcoming Widow or Wonder Woman movies. The Marvel Legends line of course was doing figures for the Widow movie, and they looked decent in previews, so I preordered almost all of them, with the Deluxe version coming in from EB Games as scheduled on March 1, 2020. As luck would have it, the figure just as I was finished up another bunch of photos, so I got right to it.

The Deluxe edition of the Black Widow figure costs $10 more than the standard one, coming in at $39.99 CAD. Natasha is garbed in her striking white outfit, and comes with far more accessories than the standard edition, and I need a copy of the standard version to compare headsculpts. Contents are as follows:

- Figure

- Three pairs of hands (closed fist, pistol gripping, melee weapon gripping)

- Pair of pistols

- Pair of sickles

- Widow Bite attack effect

- Various ground explosion effects

- Base with arm

I don't know how accurate it is, but it appears that this particular white suit is effectively a redeco of the black and grey suit of the standard edition.

As expected, Natasha is built on the standard female Marvel Legends body, which is not my thing but it does make writing this article much shorter. For reasons unknown, it appears the chest collapse joint used on the Lighting Pink Ranger still seems to be limited to that figure, and I'm going to guess the rest of the female Ranger cast. So yeah.. limited ankles, limited wrists, no waist, and ugly knee joints make their return here. Nothing spectacular posing wise, but it gets the job mostly done.

The overall presentation of Widow, to me, much better than most of the other female figures I've seen. A big part of it is, ironically, there's less paint on the body. In fact, I think it's limited to the little specs of red and silver, along with the black on her back. Everything else is a separate piece and even then the painting in is minimal, with the most paint probably on her face. While it's not perfect, the masking work and quality of the paint apps themselves appear to be better than my last few check ins.

Furthermore, it appears that the neck on this Widow isn't as long as other figures and that the gaps in her thighs, the ones that normally turn me off, are masked by the holsters. Yes, that doesn't help when the figure is posed, but at least when she's standing Nat looks like a million bucks.

Of course, there's the head itself, or more accurately, the face because the hair perfectly functional, has decent detailing, and is coloured right..end of story. The most recent iteration of the Scarlett Johansson head was on the Infinity War Widow which... didn't look great. Then there was the apparently much improved Endgame one which I wouldn't know about, seeing how we never got it in Canada, and I never got around to going to Target. Well, I'm happy to say that for a mass release Hasbro toy, they did a great job on this figure. It's a pretty good resemblance to the actor, with face printing technology taking care of the painting of the eyes and lips. From the usual arms length distance, these paint apps are sharp and crisp, and far better than what could be accomplished by hand on something this small.. or at least accomplished by the fine, fine people at Hasbro.

The base was an interesting addition.. needed for sure if you want to do all sort of aerial posing. It's a decent quality, and has the Hasbro logo on the base of the arm. The arm is kind of big, if I'm being honest, but it does get the job done. The random explosion effects are.. kind of random if you ask me. Maybe they'll make an appearance in the upcoming GI Joe line or someting.

Build quality is about the same as the rest of the Legends, with softer than I'd like joints, though fortunately it appears packaging didn't warp them. The body itself is alright.. it appears they've moved towards the same plastics used on the Transformers figures now, which is a strange combination of matte finish, and kind of a rubbery feeling. Suit detailing came out decently, so I guess at least from a functionality perspective it's fine. There are some mould lines on the fists that should have been taken off by QC, but I am happy to say that the effects themselves came out quite nicely.

That about wraps it up here - Natasha is just like all the other Legends figures, so you know what to expect, and you either love or hate the tech behind it. But, as stated, and it bears repeating, it appears the combination of improved QC and simplicity of finish has resulted in a very crisp, clean looking figure that I would still keep even if a better quality figure were available down the road (though to be fair, I'd keep it anyway because I'm a hoarder). The face is a very pleasant surprise, and I feel that the face alone is worth the price of entry.

Time to head out for the day - keep an eye open for more Black Widow merch in the months ahead.

Jae Lee's Superman and Wonder Woman

First off sorry to have flooded your Flickr Feed with so many pictures. I cannot believe the amount of detail that went into these particular figures. They are based on the Art by the incomparable Jae Lee, and sculpted beautifully by Jonathan Matthews (who also I believe sculpted the Greg Capullo Designer Series as well). I have never had figures from DC Collectibles that got me so excited since the announcement of Batman The Animated Series.

These figures go so well with the other New 52 especially the other Designer Series by Greg Capullo.

I preordered these on Amazon but when I saw them in person I just knew I had to get them right then and there.

When I saw her offer from IT, I preordered her in seconds, I was so excited to have her in my collection. I have always regretted not getting Noveau Regime and I wanted this one. Then she came home, and I was--OMG! I have to sell her. That hair looked horrid.

The holiday months were on us so I put her aside. Last week I took her out and started rearranging her hair. She slowly became likeable. I still don't LOVE her, but I don't know if I still want to sell her.

Hello again folks, and welcome to another entry into the journal, as it were. It's now the beginning of March 2020 and we are about two months away from what I predict will be the "Endgame" for MCU Widow Fans, the solo Black Widow movie. If you've been keeping up, you'll probably know I'm kind of a fan myself, and as such would naturally keep abreast of any merch pickups.

Strangely, as of this point, my usual import brands haven't announced anything from the upcoming Widow or Wonder Woman movies. The Marvel Legends line of course was doing figures for the Widow movie, and they looked decent in previews, so I preordered almost all of them, with the Deluxe version coming in from EB Games as scheduled on March 1, 2020. As luck would have it, the figure just as I was finished up another bunch of photos, so I got right to it.

The Deluxe edition of the Black Widow figure costs $10 more than the standard one, coming in at $39.99 CAD. Natasha is garbed in her striking white outfit, and comes with far more accessories than the standard edition, and I need a copy of the standard version to compare headsculpts. Contents are as follows:

- Figure

- Three pairs of hands (closed fist, pistol gripping, melee weapon gripping)

- Pair of pistols

- Pair of sickles

- Widow Bite attack effect

- Various ground explosion effects

- Base with arm

I don't know how accurate it is, but it appears that this particular white suit is effectively a redeco of the black and grey suit of the standard edition.

As expected, Natasha is built on the standard female Marvel Legends body, which is not my thing but it does make writing this article much shorter. For reasons unknown, it appears the chest collapse joint used on the Lighting Pink Ranger still seems to be limited to that figure, and I'm going to guess the rest of the female Ranger cast. So yeah.. limited ankles, limited wrists, no waist, and ugly knee joints make their return here. Nothing spectacular posing wise, but it gets the job mostly done.

The overall presentation of Widow, to me, much better than most of the other female figures I've seen. A big part of it is, ironically, there's less paint on the body. In fact, I think it's limited to the little specs of red and silver, along with the black on her back. Everything else is a separate piece and even then the painting in is minimal, with the most paint probably on her face. While it's not perfect, the masking work and quality of the paint apps themselves appear to be better than my last few check ins.

Furthermore, it appears that the neck on this Widow isn't as long as other figures and that the gaps in her thighs, the ones that normally turn me off, are masked by the holsters. Yes, that doesn't help when the figure is posed, but at least when she's standing Nat looks like a million bucks.

Of course, there's the head itself, or more accurately, the face because the hair perfectly functional, has decent detailing, and is coloured right..end of story. The most recent iteration of the Scarlett Johansson head was on the Infinity War Widow which... didn't look great. Then there was the apparently much improved Endgame one which I wouldn't know about, seeing how we never got it in Canada, and I never got around to going to Target. Well, I'm happy to say that for a mass release Hasbro toy, they did a great job on this figure. It's a pretty good resemblance to the actor, with face printing technology taking care of the painting of the eyes and lips. From the usual arms length distance, these paint apps are sharp and crisp, and far better than what could be accomplished by hand on something this small.. or at least accomplished by the fine, fine people at Hasbro.

The base was an interesting addition.. needed for sure if you want to do all sort of aerial posing. It's a decent quality, and has the Hasbro logo on the base of the arm. The arm is kind of big, if I'm being honest, but it does get the job done. The random explosion effects are.. kind of random if you ask me. Maybe they'll make an appearance in the upcoming GI Joe line or someting.

Build quality is about the same as the rest of the Legends, with softer than I'd like joints, though fortunately it appears packaging didn't warp them. The body itself is alright.. it appears they've moved towards the same plastics used on the Transformers figures now, which is a strange combination of matte finish, and kind of a rubbery feeling. Suit detailing came out decently, so I guess at least from a functionality perspective it's fine. There are some mould lines on the fists that should have been taken off by QC, but I am happy to say that the effects themselves came out quite nicely.

That about wraps it up here - Natasha is just like all the other Legends figures, so you know what to expect, and you either love or hate the tech behind it. But, as stated, and it bears repeating, it appears the combination of improved QC and simplicity of finish has resulted in a very crisp, clean looking figure that I would still keep even if a better quality figure were available down the road (though to be fair, I'd keep it anyway because I'm a hoarder). The face is a very pleasant surprise, and I feel that the face alone is worth the price of entry.

Time to head out for the day - keep an eye open for more Black Widow merch in the months ahead.

So, somehow despite paying extra for EMS shipping from Singapore, I still managed to get my MP57 after everyone who preordered in the US did. Needless to say I'm not exactly thrilled with the outcome of this.

MP57 is of course Skyfire/Jetfire, and is the most recently reelased figure in the Masterpiece line up. After seeing the pretty good job that Hasbro/Takara did on the Siege version, I figured that this figure would just be that one, but with much better production values.

Turns out I'm only half right.

Being in MP scale, Jetfire is huge. The box is 20.5 inches long, and is basically the entire length of the Jet mode. Photos have put the Jet mode at the same length as the combined Convoy/Optimus Prime 3.0 with its trailer attached.

Of course, the character mass shifts during transformation to result in a robot mode that is canonically twice as tall as Convoy, but in Jet mode is a flying fortress capable of troop transport. To show this side of things, the set comes with three mini figures - Prime, Wheeljack, and Jazz. Not sure why specifically these three, but that's what they chose..

The mini figures are actually decently articulated, with no articulation on the main torso whatsoever and very basic arms and legs. Which is normally fine (and expected) for figures of this size, but I REALLY thing they should have either given Jezz wrists of maybe considered the awkwardness of how things look with his hands fused like that.

Otherwise, accessories include two additional faces, a battle mask, his rifle, two thruster effects, Decepticon/Blank chest plate and the same Base/Stand that came with the Seekers and Dinobot,

Jet mode features landing gear that are manually operated (I say this because I remember the original G1 toy featuring spring mounted goodness) and there are various compartments you can open up for the mini figures to fit into/use, specifically the cockpit, under the fuselage, in the jetpack, and in the red pods on the lower legs. The pods are also accessible in robot mode should you so wish.

Being an updated G1 toy, this toy can assume the infamous Gerwalk mode that was the result of repurposing a Robotech toy. I honestly can't recall it actually being used in the show, but then again I can't remember many things.

Gerwalk mode can be achieved with or without the arms deployed, but of course the process is a bit more involved than back in the day. In order to make Gerwalk mode a bit more stable, the figure has die cast metal hips that provide additional support for the legs.

While yes, you can actually put the figure in Gerwalk without the support, for your own sanity you're probably going to want to do it, especially if you're displaying it in said mode for a longer period of time.

Transformation into robot mode is for the most part straight forward. MOST part. When you get to the backpack though, you're likely going to want to throw the figure out the window. The whole shifting mechanism is based on sliding panels, which are notoriously bad because of misalignment issues and just general friction. Couple with that some questionable QC and you've got a very frustrating time and getting things to shift and hold together.

The QC issues don't appear to be limited to the backpack as I have had a somewhat difficult time getting the shoulders to slot into their tab properly. I've also got a loose joint on one of my wings, though fortunately that doesn't really affect much. Getting the various accessories into the backpack cavity was also a bit of a challenge due to fit issues. I also found that the heels had to be put in just the right position for it to fold out correctly.

The resulting robot is tall, though when compared to other figures it's not as excessively large in comparison as comparing vehicle modes The goal was G1 accuracy, and you have to admit they did a bang up job from that respect. Proportions were always wonky so no criticisms from me in that regard.

Due to the weight of the figure, the legs are pretty much all ratcheting joints. Which is great from stability perspective, but not that great from an actual posing perspective. The actual hip joints are strong enough for standing robot mode, but the legs will splay out in Gerwalk mode. With the "ab crunch" hip joints deployed, the hips CAN be strong enough, but as always, test and observe. Actual range of motion is pretty typical, and the waist has flaps so you can move the legs out to the side.

However, it should be stated that the figure at least can stand up. My Siege figure has some issues with a loose hip, so it's either stand up straight or do the splits.

The rest of the body is.. pretty standard, really. There's no waist joint, and the shoulders technically are standard shoulders - but because there are additional flaps needed to move the shoulder in place, you technically have Butterfly Joint-type range of motion, but yeah, it looks weird. Elbows are single jointed but you're able to maximize range of motion. Hands are the typical MP hands with semi-fixed positions. The head can actually pull up a bit for additional range of motion

In general, you're probably not doing any dynamic battle poses without the stand, and even then you're doing them with the figure facing forward because there's only so much you can do laterally.

Speaking of heads, the facial expressions are alright, and the battle mask appears to be useable with or without an underlying face (though I think it fits better without the face under, so that might just be me forcing the thing on). It attaches with a magnet, so the grip is just the right amount to hold it in place. The faces, on the other hand, are friction based and can be a royal pain to get on and off. The other head gimmick to mention is in the head there's a meter of some sort. I don't remember the purpose of this, but I think it had to do with his changing of allegiances between Autobot and Decepticon (Jetfire was a scientist associate of Starscream).

So there you have it. Was it worth the wait? Ehhh.. I mean, it's not as bad as I thought it would be, but it turns out the lack of waist was my smallest concern. It just feels to me like the QC guys dropped the ball, because if they can get smaller figures to tab and slot n perfectly, there's no reason a figure that is at least double that size can't get it right. I mean, the new Seekers are much more complicated transformation wise and I don't have any problems like I do with Jetfire... though I guess the weak hips on the seekers is a problem I avoid here.

I think overall, though, unless you're looking specifically for a G1 styled Jetfire, you should probably consider the Siege figure, especially if you get one that doesn't have joint issues. It's like 1/3 the price, about the same size, and is significantly less frustrating to deal with.

The sticker came with the copy of Maureen Johnson's new book, The Madness Underneath, that I preordered. So thanks to Maureen for that. :)

The books shown are Will Grayson Will Grayson by John Green & David Levithan, An Abundance of Katherines by John Green, Paper Towns by John Green, The Fault In Our Stars by John Green, Thirteen Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson, The Last Little Blue Envelope by Maureen Johnson, Suite Scarlett by Maureen Johnson, The Bermudez Triangle by Maureen Johnson, and The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson.

moggymawee.com/2021/07/26/play-arts-kai-final-fantasy-7-r...

So I guess it’s high time I posted about my adventures (or rather misadventures) with the latest Version 2 Cloud figure from Play Arts Kai (aka v2 Cloud PAK).

So as you may already know, I’m a massive Cloud Strife fan! Tekken 3 and Final Fantasy 7 made up most of my childhood after moving to New Zealand, so Hwoarang and Cloud were both my centres during that time.

And naturally, to soothe my collector itch, I was desperate to own any Cloud merch at all – be it a keyring, a badge or even just a poster. But there were none. Afterall, I grew up in little old New Zealand, the secluded island nation far away from all things cool (and luckily also something else less cool in these past 2 years ^^”). All I had was fanart I’d spent hours sketching plastered all over my bedroom walls. Little Mary would’ve never dared to dream for a Cloud plushie or figure.

So imagine my utter shock and excitement when I stumbled across Cloud action figures from Play Arts Kai in the year 2017. By that time, they had already released the Advent Children and the Final Fantasy Remake Cloud. So of course, I insta-bought both. Then they released a limited colour version of Cloud in his iconic FF7 purple attire in 2018 so of course, being the loyal Cloud stan I was, I had to get him too! At that time, I was still blissfully ignorant and fearless of defects so I boldly ordered directly from the US Square Enix store and had it shipped to me from a forwarding company (this essentially voids any claims for refunds/returns in case of defects).

Fortunately, this Cloud arrived mostly perfect (the stand bags at the back came loose, but that’s nothing major). Perhaps the quality control back then was better, because out of the eight Final Fantasy PAKs I bought that year, only Prompto came with glaring defects.

This brings us nicely to my very memorable experience with the latest v2 Cloud PAK. The v2 Cloud looks amazing, he’s impeccable in likeness and aesthetics, and is hands down the best Cloud figure to date. All fantastic news, until you realize the defect rate has gone straight through the roof and you’re now getting completely drenched by rain. Seriously.

My first Cloud I preordered from Amiami came with hideous black dots embedded in the plastic at the front of his hair, so I returned him for a replacement.

Honestly, for a figure that costs $200-300NZD, you shouldn’t have to deal with these sorts of defects. And all this fiasco happened while covid was rife with no vaccines in sight, and international flights were incredibly limited so return postage to Japan was ludicrous. From memory, it cost $120NZD which was essentially over half the cost of the figure itself. Fortunately, Amiami reimbursed this in full, and the replacement figure they later sent me was thankfully perfect.

Now this would’ve been a pretty smooth and happy ending to my v2 Cloud PAK adventures if I’d been satisfied with having just one v2 Cloud. However, the Cloud stan in me itched for more – after all, this was “hands down the best Cloud figure to date” right?! I must have one to keep perfect and dust free in box, and another one out of box for display. Right?! So I proceeded to order ANOTHER v2 Cloud, this time locally from Mighty Ape. I assumed any returns would be much easier and cheaper to arrange.

And this is where the nightmare really begins. The first one from Mighty Ape came with a chipped nose and messy paint defects. Organizing a replacement took needlessly long. There was a lot of back and forth, and responses were often delayed by up to 4-7 days at a time. Finally, my replacement came after over a month? And this one was even worse! He had floating hair, messy lips, loose hips and a loose wrist! No way was I keeping a $290NZD figure like this (Mighty Ape charges more for him ($290NZD) than Amiami ($200NZD) even including international shipping and GST)! So I reached out to Mighty Ape again. I’m certain they were all sick of me by now ^^” that crazy Cloud lady lmao.

Anyway, because it was already a replacement figure they only offered me the option to keep him or return for a refund. I chose to return him and order one from Amiami instead, hoping I would have better luck there. My Prompto with the sexy shoulders also came from Mighty Ape, so I wondered whether they just stock the “bad batch” – either “re-released” ones or from an inferior factory? That’s what I chose to believe anyway, to settle my anxieties about getting yet another defective Cloud from Amiami. To my relief, my fifth and final Cloud was perfect. So that fortunately ended my v2 Cloud saga.

And before you all roll your judgy eyes at me, I must mention that it isn’t just me having all these issues with v2 Cloud. My colleague, another fellow Cloud stan, also had to go through three Cloud figures (all from Amiami) before getting a decent one without significant defects. So between the two of us, we had to go through 8x Clouds to get 3x good ones. That’s like a 60% defect rate! Neither of us had any problems with the previous Cloud PAKs. I owned three Clouds before v2 Cloud and she owned seven, so it’s quite a decent sample size too!

So yes, I can finally rest easy now that I have two good v2 Clouds. This brings my total Cloud PAK count to five! Though after such a sour and stressful experience, I don’t think my heart’s up to purchasing any more PAKs. So unless the next Clouds are super freaking unbelievably amazing, I think I’m fully done collecting these.

Hello again folks, and welcome to another entry into the journal, as it were. It's now the beginning of March 2020 and we are about two months away from what I predict will be the "Endgame" for MCU Widow Fans, the solo Black Widow movie. If you've been keeping up, you'll probably know I'm kind of a fan myself, and as such would naturally keep abreast of any merch pickups.

Strangely, as of this point, my usual import brands haven't announced anything from the upcoming Widow or Wonder Woman movies. The Marvel Legends line of course was doing figures for the Widow movie, and they looked decent in previews, so I preordered almost all of them, with the Deluxe version coming in from EB Games as scheduled on March 1, 2020. As luck would have it, the figure just as I was finished up another bunch of photos, so I got right to it.

The Deluxe edition of the Black Widow figure costs $10 more than the standard one, coming in at $39.99 CAD. Natasha is garbed in her striking white outfit, and comes with far more accessories than the standard edition, and I need a copy of the standard version to compare headsculpts. Contents are as follows:

- Figure

- Three pairs of hands (closed fist, pistol gripping, melee weapon gripping)

- Pair of pistols

- Pair of sickles

- Widow Bite attack effect

- Various ground explosion effects

- Base with arm

I don't know how accurate it is, but it appears that this particular white suit is effectively a redeco of the black and grey suit of the standard edition.

As expected, Natasha is built on the standard female Marvel Legends body, which is not my thing but it does make writing this article much shorter. For reasons unknown, it appears the chest collapse joint used on the Lighting Pink Ranger still seems to be limited to that figure, and I'm going to guess the rest of the female Ranger cast. So yeah.. limited ankles, limited wrists, no waist, and ugly knee joints make their return here. Nothing spectacular posing wise, but it gets the job mostly done.

The overall presentation of Widow, to me, much better than most of the other female figures I've seen. A big part of it is, ironically, there's less paint on the body. In fact, I think it's limited to the little specs of red and silver, along with the black on her back. Everything else is a separate piece and even then the painting in is minimal, with the most paint probably on her face. While it's not perfect, the masking work and quality of the paint apps themselves appear to be better than my last few check ins.

Furthermore, it appears that the neck on this Widow isn't as long as other figures and that the gaps in her thighs, the ones that normally turn me off, are masked by the holsters. Yes, that doesn't help when the figure is posed, but at least when she's standing Nat looks like a million bucks.

Of course, there's the head itself, or more accurately, the face because the hair perfectly functional, has decent detailing, and is coloured right..end of story. The most recent iteration of the Scarlett Johansson head was on the Infinity War Widow which... didn't look great. Then there was the apparently much improved Endgame one which I wouldn't know about, seeing how we never got it in Canada, and I never got around to going to Target. Well, I'm happy to say that for a mass release Hasbro toy, they did a great job on this figure. It's a pretty good resemblance to the actor, with face printing technology taking care of the painting of the eyes and lips. From the usual arms length distance, these paint apps are sharp and crisp, and far better than what could be accomplished by hand on something this small.. or at least accomplished by the fine, fine people at Hasbro.

The base was an interesting addition.. needed for sure if you want to do all sort of aerial posing. It's a decent quality, and has the Hasbro logo on the base of the arm. The arm is kind of big, if I'm being honest, but it does get the job done. The random explosion effects are.. kind of random if you ask me. Maybe they'll make an appearance in the upcoming GI Joe line or someting.

Build quality is about the same as the rest of the Legends, with softer than I'd like joints, though fortunately it appears packaging didn't warp them. The body itself is alright.. it appears they've moved towards the same plastics used on the Transformers figures now, which is a strange combination of matte finish, and kind of a rubbery feeling. Suit detailing came out decently, so I guess at least from a functionality perspective it's fine. There are some mould lines on the fists that should have been taken off by QC, but I am happy to say that the effects themselves came out quite nicely.

That about wraps it up here - Natasha is just like all the other Legends figures, so you know what to expect, and you either love or hate the tech behind it. But, as stated, and it bears repeating, it appears the combination of improved QC and simplicity of finish has resulted in a very crisp, clean looking figure that I would still keep even if a better quality figure were available down the road (though to be fair, I'd keep it anyway because I'm a hoarder). The face is a very pleasant surprise, and I feel that the face alone is worth the price of entry.

Time to head out for the day - keep an eye open for more Black Widow merch in the months ahead.

Whoop whoop! I love preordering. It's like a great big warm fuzzy from my postie when he surprises me with a parcel I'd long forgotten to expect. (I had encephalitis a few years ago, and my short-term memory is very ordinary. XD).

Here is PDAmaryllis, totally unretouched, gimped or photoshopped. She's not even all the way out of her box and I love her already.

Welcome to September, folks. Gateway to Fall and the end of this painful, painful year.

With that imagery of trials and tribulations in your head, I present to you the S.H. Figuarts Avengers Endgame: Rescue figure, which I received.. gonna say about the middle of August 2020.

For those of you in the know, Rescue is the armoured version of Pepper Potts, showing up in the final battle of Endgame.

This figure was one of those Bandai Exclusive figures in that you could only buy it from Bandai directly or dealers that were able to access the exclusive figures. Now, if you know, you're probably thinking to yoruself.. "Holy crap.. this came out May 30. Who did you piss of to only have recently received it?".

First off, no, I didn't use SAL - I actually upgraded to EMS. The short version of the story is this is the result of annoying Nippon Yassan for two full months after the release date, finally having them ship the figure out in the middle of August.

Not bad for a guy who preordered in December of 2019, huh?

Well, she arrived in one piece and, yes, I'm clearly going to have to be very careful in the future if I opt to order from these guys again.

The actual contents of the box are decent. You get the figure, and there are two headscupts - unhelmeted Pepper, and of course, helmet on. The rest of the kit consists of backpacks for deployed/closed wing pack, her deployed drones in one of two formations, a single large energy blast, two smaller energy blast, and eight additional posing hands.

First off, unlike Captain Marvel, the effects pieces were not soft, flimsy pieces of plastic. They're sufficiently rigid and will stay upright. While the twin blast arrangement of the drones comes with a bracket that allows for the pieces to clip on Rescue's back when she's wearing the open wing backpack, the single blast arrangement requires a separate stand.

Earlier... like 2019 earlier.... I had actually purchased the Marvel Legends version of the character. To the surprise of nobody, the Figuarts version comes with more stuff and looks much cleaner with sharper applications and parts finishing. What is interesting to me is that with the focus on reducing gaps on the upper torso (as seen in Endgame Captain Marvel and Black Widow movie edition), the upper body articulation isn't as good as the Legends figure.

The Gwyneth Paltrow sculpt is... alright. It's recognizable as her, and while it's no where as good as the ones on Widow or Thor, it's still much more recognizable compared to Captain Marvel herself.

As I expressed above, the range of motion is limited with regards to the torso. Overall, you get the point of articulation you're expecting in a Figuarts - toes, full ankles, double jointed knees, hips with pull down function, waist, mid torso, shoulders with chest collapes, bice swivel, double jointed elbows, wrists, and head) the slim, gapless torso does impede the ability to turn the upper body, and tighter joints in general just interfere with movement all over.

Another limiting factor is, and maybe because I'm spoiled from Hot Toys figures, but I feel Rescue really should have come with a bent wrist armour piece so you can pose Rescue with her wrist Repulsors forward.

Paint wise, overall very sharp even when taking account all the silver and gold accents all over the body. Masking is not overtly messy, and decals used are sharply made and applied. The weakest link from a paint perspective is the Pepper Potts head sculpt - the face itself is alright, but the yellow paint on the hair looks very heavy handed to my eyes.

Finally from a build quality perspective, this is a pretty typical Figuarts build. Joints are strong, finishes and tolerances on parts is good, with seams being hidden from view. Mechanical detailing on the body is etched deep enough such that it still shows through even after being painted on. Again, much like paint, the only area where the result isn't exactly stellar is the Pepper head, where to me it seems like there could have been a better job done, particularly on her hair.

Overall, the Figuarts Rescue figure is better than the Legends version, but it feels to me that the gap isn't really as large as with typical figures. The greatest area of improvement is in looks, as the articulation of the final product isn't that much more amazing than the Legends. I guess I was expecting something closer to what Revoltech offers.

The three month wait to finally get it in hand also didn't help with my enthusiasm level either.

At this point, I think I'm done with the Figuarts Endgame line because the prices on the Final Battle figures in general are nuts and, well, Final Battle Black Widow is gonna be one hell of a boring figure.

I suppose there are always sales on figures, but in general its...

"Good Morning, Good Afternoon, and Good Night"

Hello again folks, and welcome to another entry into the journal, as it were. It's now the beginning of March 2020 and we are about two months away from what I predict will be the "Endgame" for MCU Widow Fans, the solo Black Widow movie. If you've been keeping up, you'll probably know I'm kind of a fan myself, and as such would naturally keep abreast of any merch pickups.

Strangely, as of this point, my usual import brands haven't announced anything from the upcoming Widow or Wonder Woman movies. The Marvel Legends line of course was doing figures for the Widow movie, and they looked decent in previews, so I preordered almost all of them, with the Deluxe version coming in from EB Games as scheduled on March 1, 2020. As luck would have it, the figure just as I was finished up another bunch of photos, so I got right to it.

The Deluxe edition of the Black Widow figure costs $10 more than the standard one, coming in at $39.99 CAD. Natasha is garbed in her striking white outfit, and comes with far more accessories than the standard edition, and I need a copy of the standard version to compare headsculpts. Contents are as follows:

- Figure

- Three pairs of hands (closed fist, pistol gripping, melee weapon gripping)

- Pair of pistols

- Pair of sickles

- Widow Bite attack effect

- Various ground explosion effects

- Base with arm

I don't know how accurate it is, but it appears that this particular white suit is effectively a redeco of the black and grey suit of the standard edition.

As expected, Natasha is built on the standard female Marvel Legends body, which is not my thing but it does make writing this article much shorter. For reasons unknown, it appears the chest collapse joint used on the Lighting Pink Ranger still seems to be limited to that figure, and I'm going to guess the rest of the female Ranger cast. So yeah.. limited ankles, limited wrists, no waist, and ugly knee joints make their return here. Nothing spectacular posing wise, but it gets the job mostly done.

The overall presentation of Widow, to me, much better than most of the other female figures I've seen. A big part of it is, ironically, there's less paint on the body. In fact, I think it's limited to the little specs of red and silver, along with the black on her back. Everything else is a separate piece and even then the painting in is minimal, with the most paint probably on her face. While it's not perfect, the masking work and quality of the paint apps themselves appear to be better than my last few check ins.

Furthermore, it appears that the neck on this Widow isn't as long as other figures and that the gaps in her thighs, the ones that normally turn me off, are masked by the holsters. Yes, that doesn't help when the figure is posed, but at least when she's standing Nat looks like a million bucks.

Of course, there's the head itself, or more accurately, the face because the hair perfectly functional, has decent detailing, and is coloured right..end of story. The most recent iteration of the Scarlett Johansson head was on the Infinity War Widow which... didn't look great. Then there was the apparently much improved Endgame one which I wouldn't know about, seeing how we never got it in Canada, and I never got around to going to Target. Well, I'm happy to say that for a mass release Hasbro toy, they did a great job on this figure. It's a pretty good resemblance to the actor, with face printing technology taking care of the painting of the eyes and lips. From the usual arms length distance, these paint apps are sharp and crisp, and far better than what could be accomplished by hand on something this small.. or at least accomplished by the fine, fine people at Hasbro.

The base was an interesting addition.. needed for sure if you want to do all sort of aerial posing. It's a decent quality, and has the Hasbro logo on the base of the arm. The arm is kind of big, if I'm being honest, but it does get the job done. The random explosion effects are.. kind of random if you ask me. Maybe they'll make an appearance in the upcoming GI Joe line or someting.

Build quality is about the same as the rest of the Legends, with softer than I'd like joints, though fortunately it appears packaging didn't warp them. The body itself is alright.. it appears they've moved towards the same plastics used on the Transformers figures now, which is a strange combination of matte finish, and kind of a rubbery feeling. Suit detailing came out decently, so I guess at least from a functionality perspective it's fine. There are some mould lines on the fists that should have been taken off by QC, but I am happy to say that the effects themselves came out quite nicely.

That about wraps it up here - Natasha is just like all the other Legends figures, so you know what to expect, and you either love or hate the tech behind it. But, as stated, and it bears repeating, it appears the combination of improved QC and simplicity of finish has resulted in a very crisp, clean looking figure that I would still keep even if a better quality figure were available down the road (though to be fair, I'd keep it anyway because I'm a hoarder). The face is a very pleasant surprise, and I feel that the face alone is worth the price of entry.

Time to head out for the day - keep an eye open for more Black Widow merch in the months ahead.

Hello again folks, and welcome to another entry into the journal, as it were. It's now the beginning of March 2020 and we are about two months away from what I predict will be the "Endgame" for MCU Widow Fans, the solo Black Widow movie. If you've been keeping up, you'll probably know I'm kind of a fan myself, and as such would naturally keep abreast of any merch pickups.

Strangely, as of this point, my usual import brands haven't announced anything from the upcoming Widow or Wonder Woman movies. The Marvel Legends line of course was doing figures for the Widow movie, and they looked decent in previews, so I preordered almost all of them, with the Deluxe version coming in from EB Games as scheduled on March 1, 2020. As luck would have it, the figure just as I was finished up another bunch of photos, so I got right to it.

The Deluxe edition of the Black Widow figure costs $10 more than the standard one, coming in at $39.99 CAD. Natasha is garbed in her striking white outfit, and comes with far more accessories than the standard edition, and I need a copy of the standard version to compare headsculpts. Contents are as follows:

- Figure

- Three pairs of hands (closed fist, pistol gripping, melee weapon gripping)

- Pair of pistols

- Pair of sickles

- Widow Bite attack effect

- Various ground explosion effects

- Base with arm

I don't know how accurate it is, but it appears that this particular white suit is effectively a redeco of the black and grey suit of the standard edition.

As expected, Natasha is built on the standard female Marvel Legends body, which is not my thing but it does make writing this article much shorter. For reasons unknown, it appears the chest collapse joint used on the Lighting Pink Ranger still seems to be limited to that figure, and I'm going to guess the rest of the female Ranger cast. So yeah.. limited ankles, limited wrists, no waist, and ugly knee joints make their return here. Nothing spectacular posing wise, but it gets the job mostly done.

The overall presentation of Widow, to me, much better than most of the other female figures I've seen. A big part of it is, ironically, there's less paint on the body. In fact, I think it's limited to the little specs of red and silver, along with the black on her back. Everything else is a separate piece and even then the painting in is minimal, with the most paint probably on her face. While it's not perfect, the masking work and quality of the paint apps themselves appear to be better than my last few check ins.

Furthermore, it appears that the neck on this Widow isn't as long as other figures and that the gaps in her thighs, the ones that normally turn me off, are masked by the holsters. Yes, that doesn't help when the figure is posed, but at least when she's standing Nat looks like a million bucks.

Of course, there's the head itself, or more accurately, the face because the hair perfectly functional, has decent detailing, and is coloured right..end of story. The most recent iteration of the Scarlett Johansson head was on the Infinity War Widow which... didn't look great. Then there was the apparently much improved Endgame one which I wouldn't know about, seeing how we never got it in Canada, and I never got around to going to Target. Well, I'm happy to say that for a mass release Hasbro toy, they did a great job on this figure. It's a pretty good resemblance to the actor, with face printing technology taking care of the painting of the eyes and lips. From the usual arms length distance, these paint apps are sharp and crisp, and far better than what could be accomplished by hand on something this small.. or at least accomplished by the fine, fine people at Hasbro.

The base was an interesting addition.. needed for sure if you want to do all sort of aerial posing. It's a decent quality, and has the Hasbro logo on the base of the arm. The arm is kind of big, if I'm being honest, but it does get the job done. The random explosion effects are.. kind of random if you ask me. Maybe they'll make an appearance in the upcoming GI Joe line or someting.

Build quality is about the same as the rest of the Legends, with softer than I'd like joints, though fortunately it appears packaging didn't warp them. The body itself is alright.. it appears they've moved towards the same plastics used on the Transformers figures now, which is a strange combination of matte finish, and kind of a rubbery feeling. Suit detailing came out decently, so I guess at least from a functionality perspective it's fine. There are some mould lines on the fists that should have been taken off by QC, but I am happy to say that the effects themselves came out quite nicely.

That about wraps it up here - Natasha is just like all the other Legends figures, so you know what to expect, and you either love or hate the tech behind it. But, as stated, and it bears repeating, it appears the combination of improved QC and simplicity of finish has resulted in a very crisp, clean looking figure that I would still keep even if a better quality figure were available down the road (though to be fair, I'd keep it anyway because I'm a hoarder). The face is a very pleasant surprise, and I feel that the face alone is worth the price of entry.

Time to head out for the day - keep an eye open for more Black Widow merch in the months ahead.

Welcome to September, folks. Gateway to Fall and the end of this painful, painful year.

With that imagery of trials and tribulations in your head, I present to you the S.H. Figuarts Avengers Endgame: Rescue figure, which I received.. gonna say about the middle of August 2020.

For those of you in the know, Rescue is the armoured version of Pepper Potts, showing up in the final battle of Endgame.

This figure was one of those Bandai Exclusive figures in that you could only buy it from Bandai directly or dealers that were able to access the exclusive figures. Now, if you know, you're probably thinking to yoruself.. "Holy crap.. this came out May 30. Who did you piss of to only have recently received it?".

First off, no, I didn't use SAL - I actually upgraded to EMS. The short version of the story is this is the result of annoying Nippon Yassan for two full months after the release date, finally having them ship the figure out in the middle of August.

Not bad for a guy who preordered in December of 2019, huh?

Well, she arrived in one piece and, yes, I'm clearly going to have to be very careful in the future if I opt to order from these guys again.

The actual contents of the box are decent. You get the figure, and there are two headscupts - unhelmeted Pepper, and of course, helmet on. The rest of the kit consists of backpacks for deployed/closed wing pack, her deployed drones in one of two formations, a single large energy blast, two smaller energy blast, and eight additional posing hands.

First off, unlike Captain Marvel, the effects pieces were not soft, flimsy pieces of plastic. They're sufficiently rigid and will stay upright. While the twin blast arrangement of the drones comes with a bracket that allows for the pieces to clip on Rescue's back when she's wearing the open wing backpack, the single blast arrangement requires a separate stand.

Earlier... like 2019 earlier.... I had actually purchased the Marvel Legends version of the character. To the surprise of nobody, the Figuarts version comes with more stuff and looks much cleaner with sharper applications and parts finishing. What is interesting to me is that with the focus on reducing gaps on the upper torso (as seen in Endgame Captain Marvel and Black Widow movie edition), the upper body articulation isn't as good as the Legends figure.

The Gwyneth Paltrow sculpt is... alright. It's recognizable as her, and while it's no where as good as the ones on Widow or Thor, it's still much more recognizable compared to Captain Marvel herself.

As I expressed above, the range of motion is limited with regards to the torso. Overall, you get the point of articulation you're expecting in a Figuarts - toes, full ankles, double jointed knees, hips with pull down function, waist, mid torso, shoulders with chest collapes, bice swivel, double jointed elbows, wrists, and head) the slim, gapless torso does impede the ability to turn the upper body, and tighter joints in general just interfere with movement all over.

Another limiting factor is, and maybe because I'm spoiled from Hot Toys figures, but I feel Rescue really should have come with a bent wrist armour piece so you can pose Rescue with her wrist Repulsors forward.

Paint wise, overall very sharp even when taking account all the silver and gold accents all over the body. Masking is not overtly messy, and decals used are sharply made and applied. The weakest link from a paint perspective is the Pepper Potts head sculpt - the face itself is alright, but the yellow paint on the hair looks very heavy handed to my eyes.

Finally from a build quality perspective, this is a pretty typical Figuarts build. Joints are strong, finishes and tolerances on parts is good, with seams being hidden from view. Mechanical detailing on the body is etched deep enough such that it still shows through even after being painted on. Again, much like paint, the only area where the result isn't exactly stellar is the Pepper head, where to me it seems like there could have been a better job done, particularly on her hair.

Overall, the Figuarts Rescue figure is better than the Legends version, but it feels to me that the gap isn't really as large as with typical figures. The greatest area of improvement is in looks, as the articulation of the final product isn't that much more amazing than the Legends. I guess I was expecting something closer to what Revoltech offers.

The three month wait to finally get it in hand also didn't help with my enthusiasm level either.

At this point, I think I'm done with the Figuarts Endgame line because the prices on the Final Battle figures in general are nuts and, well, Final Battle Black Widow is gonna be one hell of a boring figure.

I suppose there are always sales on figures, but in general its...

"Good Morning, Good Afternoon, and Good Night"

Hello again folks, and welcome to another entry into the journal, as it were. It's now the beginning of March 2020 and we are about two months away from what I predict will be the "Endgame" for MCU Widow Fans, the solo Black Widow movie. If you've been keeping up, you'll probably know I'm kind of a fan myself, and as such would naturally keep abreast of any merch pickups.

Strangely, as of this point, my usual import brands haven't announced anything from the upcoming Widow or Wonder Woman movies. The Marvel Legends line of course was doing figures for the Widow movie, and they looked decent in previews, so I preordered almost all of them, with the Deluxe version coming in from EB Games as scheduled on March 1, 2020. As luck would have it, the figure just as I was finished up another bunch of photos, so I got right to it.

The Deluxe edition of the Black Widow figure costs $10 more than the standard one, coming in at $39.99 CAD. Natasha is garbed in her striking white outfit, and comes with far more accessories than the standard edition, and I need a copy of the standard version to compare headsculpts. Contents are as follows:

- Figure

- Three pairs of hands (closed fist, pistol gripping, melee weapon gripping)

- Pair of pistols

- Pair of sickles

- Widow Bite attack effect

- Various ground explosion effects

- Base with arm

I don't know how accurate it is, but it appears that this particular white suit is effectively a redeco of the black and grey suit of the standard edition.

As expected, Natasha is built on the standard female Marvel Legends body, which is not my thing but it does make writing this article much shorter. For reasons unknown, it appears the chest collapse joint used on the Lighting Pink Ranger still seems to be limited to that figure, and I'm going to guess the rest of the female Ranger cast. So yeah.. limited ankles, limited wrists, no waist, and ugly knee joints make their return here. Nothing spectacular posing wise, but it gets the job mostly done.

The overall presentation of Widow, to me, much better than most of the other female figures I've seen. A big part of it is, ironically, there's less paint on the body. In fact, I think it's limited to the little specs of red and silver, along with the black on her back. Everything else is a separate piece and even then the painting in is minimal, with the most paint probably on her face. While it's not perfect, the masking work and quality of the paint apps themselves appear to be better than my last few check ins.

Furthermore, it appears that the neck on this Widow isn't as long as other figures and that the gaps in her thighs, the ones that normally turn me off, are masked by the holsters. Yes, that doesn't help when the figure is posed, but at least when she's standing Nat looks like a million bucks.

Of course, there's the head itself, or more accurately, the face because the hair perfectly functional, has decent detailing, and is coloured right..end of story. The most recent iteration of the Scarlett Johansson head was on the Infinity War Widow which... didn't look great. Then there was the apparently much improved Endgame one which I wouldn't know about, seeing how we never got it in Canada, and I never got around to going to Target. Well, I'm happy to say that for a mass release Hasbro toy, they did a great job on this figure. It's a pretty good resemblance to the actor, with face printing technology taking care of the painting of the eyes and lips. From the usual arms length distance, these paint apps are sharp and crisp, and far better than what could be accomplished by hand on something this small.. or at least accomplished by the fine, fine people at Hasbro.

The base was an interesting addition.. needed for sure if you want to do all sort of aerial posing. It's a decent quality, and has the Hasbro logo on the base of the arm. The arm is kind of big, if I'm being honest, but it does get the job done. The random explosion effects are.. kind of random if you ask me. Maybe they'll make an appearance in the upcoming GI Joe line or someting.

Build quality is about the same as the rest of the Legends, with softer than I'd like joints, though fortunately it appears packaging didn't warp them. The body itself is alright.. it appears they've moved towards the same plastics used on the Transformers figures now, which is a strange combination of matte finish, and kind of a rubbery feeling. Suit detailing came out decently, so I guess at least from a functionality perspective it's fine. There are some mould lines on the fists that should have been taken off by QC, but I am happy to say that the effects themselves came out quite nicely.

That about wraps it up here - Natasha is just like all the other Legends figures, so you know what to expect, and you either love or hate the tech behind it. But, as stated, and it bears repeating, it appears the combination of improved QC and simplicity of finish has resulted in a very crisp, clean looking figure that I would still keep even if a better quality figure were available down the road (though to be fair, I'd keep it anyway because I'm a hoarder). The face is a very pleasant surprise, and I feel that the face alone is worth the price of entry.

Time to head out for the day - keep an eye open for more Black Widow merch in the months ahead.

So, somehow despite paying extra for EMS shipping from Singapore, I still managed to get my MP57 after everyone who preordered in the US did. Needless to say I'm not exactly thrilled with the outcome of this.

MP57 is of course Skyfire/Jetfire, and is the most recently reelased figure in the Masterpiece line up. After seeing the pretty good job that Hasbro/Takara did on the Siege version, I figured that this figure would just be that one, but with much better production values.

Turns out I'm only half right.

Being in MP scale, Jetfire is huge. The box is 20.5 inches long, and is basically the entire length of the Jet mode. Photos have put the Jet mode at the same length as the combined Convoy/Optimus Prime 3.0 with its trailer attached.

Of course, the character mass shifts during transformation to result in a robot mode that is canonically twice as tall as Convoy, but in Jet mode is a flying fortress capable of troop transport. To show this side of things, the set comes with three mini figures - Prime, Wheeljack, and Jazz. Not sure why specifically these three, but that's what they chose..

The mini figures are actually decently articulated, with no articulation on the main torso whatsoever and very basic arms and legs. Which is normally fine (and expected) for figures of this size, but I REALLY thing they should have either given Jezz wrists of maybe considered the awkwardness of how things look with his hands fused like that.

Otherwise, accessories include two additional faces, a battle mask, his rifle, two thruster effects, Decepticon/Blank chest plate and the same Base/Stand that came with the Seekers and Dinobot,

Jet mode features landing gear that are manually operated (I say this because I remember the original G1 toy featuring spring mounted goodness) and there are various compartments you can open up for the mini figures to fit into/use, specifically the cockpit, under the fuselage, in the jetpack, and in the red pods on the lower legs. The pods are also accessible in robot mode should you so wish.

Being an updated G1 toy, this toy can assume the infamous Gerwalk mode that was the result of repurposing a Robotech toy. I honestly can't recall it actually being used in the show, but then again I can't remember many things.

Gerwalk mode can be achieved with or without the arms deployed, but of course the process is a bit more involved than back in the day. In order to make Gerwalk mode a bit more stable, the figure has die cast metal hips that provide additional support for the legs.

While yes, you can actually put the figure in Gerwalk without the support, for your own sanity you're probably going to want to do it, especially if you're displaying it in said mode for a longer period of time.

Transformation into robot mode is for the most part straight forward. MOST part. When you get to the backpack though, you're likely going to want to throw the figure out the window. The whole shifting mechanism is based on sliding panels, which are notoriously bad because of misalignment issues and just general friction. Couple with that some questionable QC and you've got a very frustrating time and getting things to shift and hold together.

The QC issues don't appear to be limited to the backpack as I have had a somewhat difficult time getting the shoulders to slot into their tab properly. I've also got a loose joint on one of my wings, though fortunately that doesn't really affect much. Getting the various accessories into the backpack cavity was also a bit of a challenge due to fit issues. I also found that the heels had to be put in just the right position for it to fold out correctly.

The resulting robot is tall, though when compared to other figures it's not as excessively large in comparison as comparing vehicle modes The goal was G1 accuracy, and you have to admit they did a bang up job from that respect. Proportions were always wonky so no criticisms from me in that regard.

Due to the weight of the figure, the legs are pretty much all ratcheting joints. Which is great from stability perspective, but not that great from an actual posing perspective. The actual hip joints are strong enough for standing robot mode, but the legs will splay out in Gerwalk mode. With the "ab crunch" hip joints deployed, the hips CAN be strong enough, but as always, test and observe. Actual range of motion is pretty typical, and the waist has flaps so you can move the legs out to the side.

However, it should be stated that the figure at least can stand up. My Siege figure has some issues with a loose hip, so it's either stand up straight or do the splits.

The rest of the body is.. pretty standard, really. There's no waist joint, and the shoulders technically are standard shoulders - but because there are additional flaps needed to move the shoulder in place, you technically have Butterfly Joint-type range of motion, but yeah, it looks weird. Elbows are single jointed but you're able to maximize range of motion. Hands are the typical MP hands with semi-fixed positions. The head can actually pull up a bit for additional range of motion

In general, you're probably not doing any dynamic battle poses without the stand, and even then you're doing them with the figure facing forward because there's only so much you can do laterally.

Speaking of heads, the facial expressions are alright, and the battle mask appears to be useable with or without an underlying face (though I think it fits better without the face under, so that might just be me forcing the thing on). It attaches with a magnet, so the grip is just the right amount to hold it in place. The faces, on the other hand, are friction based and can be a royal pain to get on and off. The other head gimmick to mention is in the head there's a meter of some sort. I don't remember the purpose of this, but I think it had to do with his changing of allegiances between Autobot and Decepticon (Jetfire was a scientist associate of Starscream).

So there you have it. Was it worth the wait? Ehhh.. I mean, it's not as bad as I thought it would be, but it turns out the lack of waist was my smallest concern. It just feels to me like the QC guys dropped the ball, because if they can get smaller figures to tab and slot n perfectly, there's no reason a figure that is at least double that size can't get it right. I mean, the new Seekers are much more complicated transformation wise and I don't have any problems like I do with Jetfire... though I guess the weak hips on the seekers is a problem I avoid here.

I think overall, though, unless you're looking specifically for a G1 styled Jetfire, you should probably consider the Siege figure, especially if you get one that doesn't have joint issues. It's like 1/3 the price, about the same size, and is significantly less frustrating to deal with.

Yessssssssssssssss. I'm totally preordering this bad boy once preorders open.

So happy that Good Smile Company is releasing more Persona 5 figmas. We already got Joker, Panther and Fox coming up.

I would love to see the rest of the gang, in their Persona outfits or school uniforms <3 <3

Welcome to September, folks. Gateway to Fall and the end of this painful, painful year.

With that imagery of trials and tribulations in your head, I present to you the S.H. Figuarts Avengers Endgame: Rescue figure, which I received.. gonna say about the middle of August 2020.

For those of you in the know, Rescue is the armoured version of Pepper Potts, showing up in the final battle of Endgame.

This figure was one of those Bandai Exclusive figures in that you could only buy it from Bandai directly or dealers that were able to access the exclusive figures. Now, if you know, you're probably thinking to yoruself.. "Holy crap.. this came out May 30. Who did you piss of to only have recently received it?".

First off, no, I didn't use SAL - I actually upgraded to EMS. The short version of the story is this is the result of annoying Nippon Yassan for two full months after the release date, finally having them ship the figure out in the middle of August.

Not bad for a guy who preordered in December of 2019, huh?

Well, she arrived in one piece and, yes, I'm clearly going to have to be very careful in the future if I opt to order from these guys again.

The actual contents of the box are decent. You get the figure, and there are two headscupts - unhelmeted Pepper, and of course, helmet on. The rest of the kit consists of backpacks for deployed/closed wing pack, her deployed drones in one of two formations, a single large energy blast, two smaller energy blast, and eight additional posing hands.

First off, unlike Captain Marvel, the effects pieces were not soft, flimsy pieces of plastic. They're sufficiently rigid and will stay upright. While the twin blast arrangement of the drones comes with a bracket that allows for the pieces to clip on Rescue's back when she's wearing the open wing backpack, the single blast arrangement requires a separate stand.

Earlier... like 2019 earlier.... I had actually purchased the Marvel Legends version of the character. To the surprise of nobody, the Figuarts version comes with more stuff and looks much cleaner with sharper applications and parts finishing. What is interesting to me is that with the focus on reducing gaps on the upper torso (as seen in Endgame Captain Marvel and Black Widow movie edition), the upper body articulation isn't as good as the Legends figure.

The Gwyneth Paltrow sculpt is... alright. It's recognizable as her, and while it's no where as good as the ones on Widow or Thor, it's still much more recognizable compared to Captain Marvel herself.

As I expressed above, the range of motion is limited with regards to the torso. Overall, you get the point of articulation you're expecting in a Figuarts - toes, full ankles, double jointed knees, hips with pull down function, waist, mid torso, shoulders with chest collapes, bice swivel, double jointed elbows, wrists, and head) the slim, gapless torso does impede the ability to turn the upper body, and tighter joints in general just interfere with movement all over.

Another limiting factor is, and maybe because I'm spoiled from Hot Toys figures, but I feel Rescue really should have come with a bent wrist armour piece so you can pose Rescue with her wrist Repulsors forward.

Paint wise, overall very sharp even when taking account all the silver and gold accents all over the body. Masking is not overtly messy, and decals used are sharply made and applied. The weakest link from a paint perspective is the Pepper Potts head sculpt - the face itself is alright, but the yellow paint on the hair looks very heavy handed to my eyes.

Finally from a build quality perspective, this is a pretty typical Figuarts build. Joints are strong, finishes and tolerances on parts is good, with seams being hidden from view. Mechanical detailing on the body is etched deep enough such that it still shows through even after being painted on. Again, much like paint, the only area where the result isn't exactly stellar is the Pepper head, where to me it seems like there could have been a better job done, particularly on her hair.

Overall, the Figuarts Rescue figure is better than the Legends version, but it feels to me that the gap isn't really as large as with typical figures. The greatest area of improvement is in looks, as the articulation of the final product isn't that much more amazing than the Legends. I guess I was expecting something closer to what Revoltech offers.

The three month wait to finally get it in hand also didn't help with my enthusiasm level either.

At this point, I think I'm done with the Figuarts Endgame line because the prices on the Final Battle figures in general are nuts and, well, Final Battle Black Widow is gonna be one hell of a boring figure.

I suppose there are always sales on figures, but in general its...

"Good Morning, Good Afternoon, and Good Night"

So, somehow despite paying extra for EMS shipping from Singapore, I still managed to get my MP57 after everyone who preordered in the US did. Needless to say I'm not exactly thrilled with the outcome of this.

MP57 is of course Skyfire/Jetfire, and is the most recently reelased figure in the Masterpiece line up. After seeing the pretty good job that Hasbro/Takara did on the Siege version, I figured that this figure would just be that one, but with much better production values.

Turns out I'm only half right.

Being in MP scale, Jetfire is huge. The box is 20.5 inches long, and is basically the entire length of the Jet mode. Photos have put the Jet mode at the same length as the combined Convoy/Optimus Prime 3.0 with its trailer attached.

Of course, the character mass shifts during transformation to result in a robot mode that is canonically twice as tall as Convoy, but in Jet mode is a flying fortress capable of troop transport. To show this side of things, the set comes with three mini figures - Prime, Wheeljack, and Jazz. Not sure why specifically these three, but that's what they chose..

The mini figures are actually decently articulated, with no articulation on the main torso whatsoever and very basic arms and legs. Which is normally fine (and expected) for figures of this size, but I REALLY thing they should have either given Jezz wrists of maybe considered the awkwardness of how things look with his hands fused like that.

Otherwise, accessories include two additional faces, a battle mask, his rifle, two thruster effects, Decepticon/Blank chest plate and the same Base/Stand that came with the Seekers and Dinobot,

Jet mode features landing gear that are manually operated (I say this because I remember the original G1 toy featuring spring mounted goodness) and there are various compartments you can open up for the mini figures to fit into/use, specifically the cockpit, under the fuselage, in the jetpack, and in the red pods on the lower legs. The pods are also accessible in robot mode should you so wish.

Being an updated G1 toy, this toy can assume the infamous Gerwalk mode that was the result of repurposing a Robotech toy. I honestly can't recall it actually being used in the show, but then again I can't remember many things.

Gerwalk mode can be achieved with or without the arms deployed, but of course the process is a bit more involved than back in the day. In order to make Gerwalk mode a bit more stable, the figure has die cast metal hips that provide additional support for the legs.

While yes, you can actually put the figure in Gerwalk without the support, for your own sanity you're probably going to want to do it, especially if you're displaying it in said mode for a longer period of time.

Transformation into robot mode is for the most part straight forward. MOST part. When you get to the backpack though, you're likely going to want to throw the figure out the window. The whole shifting mechanism is based on sliding panels, which are notoriously bad because of misalignment issues and just general friction. Couple with that some questionable QC and you've got a very frustrating time and getting things to shift and hold together.

The QC issues don't appear to be limited to the backpack as I have had a somewhat difficult time getting the shoulders to slot into their tab properly. I've also got a loose joint on one of my wings, though fortunately that doesn't really affect much. Getting the various accessories into the backpack cavity was also a bit of a challenge due to fit issues. I also found that the heels had to be put in just the right position for it to fold out correctly.

The resulting robot is tall, though when compared to other figures it's not as excessively large in comparison as comparing vehicle modes The goal was G1 accuracy, and you have to admit they did a bang up job from that respect. Proportions were always wonky so no criticisms from me in that regard.

Due to the weight of the figure, the legs are pretty much all ratcheting joints. Which is great from stability perspective, but not that great from an actual posing perspective. The actual hip joints are strong enough for standing robot mode, but the legs will splay out in Gerwalk mode. With the "ab crunch" hip joints deployed, the hips CAN be strong enough, but as always, test and observe. Actual range of motion is pretty typical, and the waist has flaps so you can move the legs out to the side.

However, it should be stated that the figure at least can stand up. My Siege figure has some issues with a loose hip, so it's either stand up straight or do the splits.

The rest of the body is.. pretty standard, really. There's no waist joint, and the shoulders technically are standard shoulders - but because there are additional flaps needed to move the shoulder in place, you technically have Butterfly Joint-type range of motion, but yeah, it looks weird. Elbows are single jointed but you're able to maximize range of motion. Hands are the typical MP hands with semi-fixed positions. The head can actually pull up a bit for additional range of motion

In general, you're probably not doing any dynamic battle poses without the stand, and even then you're doing them with the figure facing forward because there's only so much you can do laterally.

Speaking of heads, the facial expressions are alright, and the battle mask appears to be useable with or without an underlying face (though I think it fits better without the face under, so that might just be me forcing the thing on). It attaches with a magnet, so the grip is just the right amount to hold it in place. The faces, on the other hand, are friction based and can be a royal pain to get on and off. The other head gimmick to mention is in the head there's a meter of some sort. I don't remember the purpose of this, but I think it had to do with his changing of allegiances between Autobot and Decepticon (Jetfire was a scientist associate of Starscream).

So there you have it. Was it worth the wait? Ehhh.. I mean, it's not as bad as I thought it would be, but it turns out the lack of waist was my smallest concern. It just feels to me like the QC guys dropped the ball, because if they can get smaller figures to tab and slot n perfectly, there's no reason a figure that is at least double that size can't get it right. I mean, the new Seekers are much more complicated transformation wise and I don't have any problems like I do with Jetfire... though I guess the weak hips on the seekers is a problem I avoid here.

I think overall, though, unless you're looking specifically for a G1 styled Jetfire, you should probably consider the Siege figure, especially if you get one that doesn't have joint issues. It's like 1/3 the price, about the same size, and is significantly less frustrating to deal with.

So, somehow despite paying extra for EMS shipping from Singapore, I still managed to get my MP57 after everyone who preordered in the US did. Needless to say I'm not exactly thrilled with the outcome of this.

MP57 is of course Skyfire/Jetfire, and is the most recently reelased figure in the Masterpiece line up. After seeing the pretty good job that Hasbro/Takara did on the Siege version, I figured that this figure would just be that one, but with much better production values.

Turns out I'm only half right.

Being in MP scale, Jetfire is huge. The box is 20.5 inches long, and is basically the entire length of the Jet mode. Photos have put the Jet mode at the same length as the combined Convoy/Optimus Prime 3.0 with its trailer attached.

Of course, the character mass shifts during transformation to result in a robot mode that is canonically twice as tall as Convoy, but in Jet mode is a flying fortress capable of troop transport. To show this side of things, the set comes with three mini figures - Prime, Wheeljack, and Jazz. Not sure why specifically these three, but that's what they chose..

The mini figures are actually decently articulated, with no articulation on the main torso whatsoever and very basic arms and legs. Which is normally fine (and expected) for figures of this size, but I REALLY thing they should have either given Jezz wrists of maybe considered the awkwardness of how things look with his hands fused like that.

Otherwise, accessories include two additional faces, a battle mask, his rifle, two thruster effects, Decepticon/Blank chest plate and the same Base/Stand that came with the Seekers and Dinobot,

Jet mode features landing gear that are manually operated (I say this because I remember the original G1 toy featuring spring mounted goodness) and there are various compartments you can open up for the mini figures to fit into/use, specifically the cockpit, under the fuselage, in the jetpack, and in the red pods on the lower legs. The pods are also accessible in robot mode should you so wish.

Being an updated G1 toy, this toy can assume the infamous Gerwalk mode that was the result of repurposing a Robotech toy. I honestly can't recall it actually being used in the show, but then again I can't remember many things.

Gerwalk mode can be achieved with or without the arms deployed, but of course the process is a bit more involved than back in the day. In order to make Gerwalk mode a bit more stable, the figure has die cast metal hips that provide additional support for the legs.

While yes, you can actually put the figure in Gerwalk without the support, for your own sanity you're probably going to want to do it, especially if you're displaying it in said mode for a longer period of time.

Transformation into robot mode is for the most part straight forward. MOST part. When you get to the backpack though, you're likely going to want to throw the figure out the window. The whole shifting mechanism is based on sliding panels, which are notoriously bad because of misalignment issues and just general friction. Couple with that some questionable QC and you've got a very frustrating time and getting things to shift and hold together.

The QC issues don't appear to be limited to the backpack as I have had a somewhat difficult time getting the shoulders to slot into their tab properly. I've also got a loose joint on one of my wings, though fortunately that doesn't really affect much. Getting the various accessories into the backpack cavity was also a bit of a challenge due to fit issues. I also found that the heels had to be put in just the right position for it to fold out correctly.

The resulting robot is tall, though when compared to other figures it's not as excessively large in comparison as comparing vehicle modes The goal was G1 accuracy, and you have to admit they did a bang up job from that respect. Proportions were always wonky so no criticisms from me in that regard.

Due to the weight of the figure, the legs are pretty much all ratcheting joints. Which is great from stability perspective, but not that great from an actual posing perspective. The actual hip joints are strong enough for standing robot mode, but the legs will splay out in Gerwalk mode. With the "ab crunch" hip joints deployed, the hips CAN be strong enough, but as always, test and observe. Actual range of motion is pretty typical, and the waist has flaps so you can move the legs out to the side.

However, it should be stated that the figure at least can stand up. My Siege figure has some issues with a loose hip, so it's either stand up straight or do the splits.

The rest of the body is.. pretty standard, really. There's no waist joint, and the shoulders technically are standard shoulders - but because there are additional flaps needed to move the shoulder in place, you technically have Butterfly Joint-type range of motion, but yeah, it looks weird. Elbows are single jointed but you're able to maximize range of motion. Hands are the typical MP hands with semi-fixed positions. The head can actually pull up a bit for additional range of motion

In general, you're probably not doing any dynamic battle poses without the stand, and even then you're doing them with the figure facing forward because there's only so much you can do laterally.

Speaking of heads, the facial expressions are alright, and the battle mask appears to be useable with or without an underlying face (though I think it fits better without the face under, so that might just be me forcing the thing on). It attaches with a magnet, so the grip is just the right amount to hold it in place. The faces, on the other hand, are friction based and can be a royal pain to get on and off. The other head gimmick to mention is in the head there's a meter of some sort. I don't remember the purpose of this, but I think it had to do with his changing of allegiances between Autobot and Decepticon (Jetfire was a scientist associate of Starscream).

So there you have it. Was it worth the wait? Ehhh.. I mean, it's not as bad as I thought it would be, but it turns out the lack of waist was my smallest concern. It just feels to me like the QC guys dropped the ball, because if they can get smaller figures to tab and slot n perfectly, there's no reason a figure that is at least double that size can't get it right. I mean, the new Seekers are much more complicated transformation wise and I don't have any problems like I do with Jetfire... though I guess the weak hips on the seekers is a problem I avoid here.

I think overall, though, unless you're looking specifically for a G1 styled Jetfire, you should probably consider the Siege figure, especially if you get one that doesn't have joint issues. It's like 1/3 the price, about the same size, and is significantly less frustrating to deal with.

My Neo Noir Pullip came earlier this week. Just before she arrived, I wasn't sure if I'd done the right thing preordering her, but I totally love her! She's so pretty! I haven't taken her out of her stock outfit yet and she doesn't have a name yet.

Hello again folks, and welcome to another entry into the journal, as it were. It's now the beginning of March 2020 and we are about two months away from what I predict will be the "Endgame" for MCU Widow Fans, the solo Black Widow movie. If you've been keeping up, you'll probably know I'm kind of a fan myself, and as such would naturally keep abreast of any merch pickups.

Strangely, as of this point, my usual import brands haven't announced anything from the upcoming Widow or Wonder Woman movies. The Marvel Legends line of course was doing figures for the Widow movie, and they looked decent in previews, so I preordered almost all of them, with the Deluxe version coming in from EB Games as scheduled on March 1, 2020. As luck would have it, the figure just as I was finished up another bunch of photos, so I got right to it.

The Deluxe edition of the Black Widow figure costs $10 more than the standard one, coming in at $39.99 CAD. Natasha is garbed in her striking white outfit, and comes with far more accessories than the standard edition, and I need a copy of the standard version to compare headsculpts. Contents are as follows:

- Figure

- Three pairs of hands (closed fist, pistol gripping, melee weapon gripping)

- Pair of pistols

- Pair of sickles

- Widow Bite attack effect

- Various ground explosion effects

- Base with arm

I don't know how accurate it is, but it appears that this particular white suit is effectively a redeco of the black and grey suit of the standard edition.

As expected, Natasha is built on the standard female Marvel Legends body, which is not my thing but it does make writing this article much shorter. For reasons unknown, it appears the chest collapse joint used on the Lighting Pink Ranger still seems to be limited to that figure, and I'm going to guess the rest of the female Ranger cast. So yeah.. limited ankles, limited wrists, no waist, and ugly knee joints make their return here. Nothing spectacular posing wise, but it gets the job mostly done.

The overall presentation of Widow, to me, much better than most of the other female figures I've seen. A big part of it is, ironically, there's less paint on the body. In fact, I think it's limited to the little specs of red and silver, along with the black on her back. Everything else is a separate piece and even then the painting in is minimal, with the most paint probably on her face. While it's not perfect, the masking work and quality of the paint apps themselves appear to be better than my last few check ins.

Furthermore, it appears that the neck on this Widow isn't as long as other figures and that the gaps in her thighs, the ones that normally turn me off, are masked by the holsters. Yes, that doesn't help when the figure is posed, but at least when she's standing Nat looks like a million bucks.

Of course, there's the head itself, or more accurately, the face because the hair perfectly functional, has decent detailing, and is coloured right..end of story. The most recent iteration of the Scarlett Johansson head was on the Infinity War Widow which... didn't look great. Then there was the apparently much improved Endgame one which I wouldn't know about, seeing how we never got it in Canada, and I never got around to going to Target. Well, I'm happy to say that for a mass release Hasbro toy, they did a great job on this figure. It's a pretty good resemblance to the actor, with face printing technology taking care of the painting of the eyes and lips. From the usual arms length distance, these paint apps are sharp and crisp, and far better than what could be accomplished by hand on something this small.. or at least accomplished by the fine, fine people at Hasbro.

The base was an interesting addition.. needed for sure if you want to do all sort of aerial posing. It's a decent quality, and has the Hasbro logo on the base of the arm. The arm is kind of big, if I'm being honest, but it does get the job done. The random explosion effects are.. kind of random if you ask me. Maybe they'll make an appearance in the upcoming GI Joe line or someting.

Build quality is about the same as the rest of the Legends, with softer than I'd like joints, though fortunately it appears packaging didn't warp them. The body itself is alright.. it appears they've moved towards the same plastics used on the Transformers figures now, which is a strange combination of matte finish, and kind of a rubbery feeling. Suit detailing came out decently, so I guess at least from a functionality perspective it's fine. There are some mould lines on the fists that should have been taken off by QC, but I am happy to say that the effects themselves came out quite nicely.

That about wraps it up here - Natasha is just like all the other Legends figures, so you know what to expect, and you either love or hate the tech behind it. But, as stated, and it bears repeating, it appears the combination of improved QC and simplicity of finish has resulted in a very crisp, clean looking figure that I would still keep even if a better quality figure were available down the road (though to be fair, I'd keep it anyway because I'm a hoarder). The face is a very pleasant surprise, and I feel that the face alone is worth the price of entry.

Time to head out for the day - keep an eye open for more Black Widow merch in the months ahead.

Hello again folks, and welcome to another entry into the journal, as it were. It's now the beginning of March 2020 and we are about two months away from what I predict will be the "Endgame" for MCU Widow Fans, the solo Black Widow movie. If you've been keeping up, you'll probably know I'm kind of a fan myself, and as such would naturally keep abreast of any merch pickups.

Strangely, as of this point, my usual import brands haven't announced anything from the upcoming Widow or Wonder Woman movies. The Marvel Legends line of course was doing figures for the Widow movie, and they looked decent in previews, so I preordered almost all of them, with the Deluxe version coming in from EB Games as scheduled on March 1, 2020. As luck would have it, the figure just as I was finished up another bunch of photos, so I got right to it.

The Deluxe edition of the Black Widow figure costs $10 more than the standard one, coming in at $39.99 CAD. Natasha is garbed in her striking white outfit, and comes with far more accessories than the standard edition, and I need a copy of the standard version to compare headsculpts. Contents are as follows:

- Figure

- Three pairs of hands (closed fist, pistol gripping, melee weapon gripping)

- Pair of pistols

- Pair of sickles

- Widow Bite attack effect

- Various ground explosion effects

- Base with arm

I don't know how accurate it is, but it appears that this particular white suit is effectively a redeco of the black and grey suit of the standard edition.

As expected, Natasha is built on the standard female Marvel Legends body, which is not my thing but it does make writing this article much shorter. For reasons unknown, it appears the chest collapse joint used on the Lighting Pink Ranger still seems to be limited to that figure, and I'm going to guess the rest of the female Ranger cast. So yeah.. limited ankles, limited wrists, no waist, and ugly knee joints make their return here. Nothing spectacular posing wise, but it gets the job mostly done.

The overall presentation of Widow, to me, much better than most of the other female figures I've seen. A big part of it is, ironically, there's less paint on the body. In fact, I think it's limited to the little specs of red and silver, along with the black on her back. Everything else is a separate piece and even then the painting in is minimal, with the most paint probably on her face. While it's not perfect, the masking work and quality of the paint apps themselves appear to be better than my last few check ins.

Furthermore, it appears that the neck on this Widow isn't as long as other figures and that the gaps in her thighs, the ones that normally turn me off, are masked by the holsters. Yes, that doesn't help when the figure is posed, but at least when she's standing Nat looks like a million bucks.

Of course, there's the head itself, or more accurately, the face because the hair perfectly functional, has decent detailing, and is coloured right..end of story. The most recent iteration of the Scarlett Johansson head was on the Infinity War Widow which... didn't look great. Then there was the apparently much improved Endgame one which I wouldn't know about, seeing how we never got it in Canada, and I never got around to going to Target. Well, I'm happy to say that for a mass release Hasbro toy, they did a great job on this figure. It's a pretty good resemblance to the actor, with face printing technology taking care of the painting of the eyes and lips. From the usual arms length distance, these paint apps are sharp and crisp, and far better than what could be accomplished by hand on something this small.. or at least accomplished by the fine, fine people at Hasbro.

The base was an interesting addition.. needed for sure if you want to do all sort of aerial posing. It's a decent quality, and has the Hasbro logo on the base of the arm. The arm is kind of big, if I'm being honest, but it does get the job done. The random explosion effects are.. kind of random if you ask me. Maybe they'll make an appearance in the upcoming GI Joe line or someting.

Build quality is about the same as the rest of the Legends, with softer than I'd like joints, though fortunately it appears packaging didn't warp them. The body itself is alright.. it appears they've moved towards the same plastics used on the Transformers figures now, which is a strange combination of matte finish, and kind of a rubbery feeling. Suit detailing came out decently, so I guess at least from a functionality perspective it's fine. There are some mould lines on the fists that should have been taken off by QC, but I am happy to say that the effects themselves came out quite nicely.

That about wraps it up here - Natasha is just like all the other Legends figures, so you know what to expect, and you either love or hate the tech behind it. But, as stated, and it bears repeating, it appears the combination of improved QC and simplicity of finish has resulted in a very crisp, clean looking figure that I would still keep even if a better quality figure were available down the road (though to be fair, I'd keep it anyway because I'm a hoarder). The face is a very pleasant surprise, and I feel that the face alone is worth the price of entry.

Time to head out for the day - keep an eye open for more Black Widow merch in the months ahead.

Hello again folks, and welcome to another entry into the journal, as it were. It's now the beginning of March 2020 and we are about two months away from what I predict will be the "Endgame" for MCU Widow Fans, the solo Black Widow movie. If you've been keeping up, you'll probably know I'm kind of a fan myself, and as such would naturally keep abreast of any merch pickups.

Strangely, as of this point, my usual import brands haven't announced anything from the upcoming Widow or Wonder Woman movies. The Marvel Legends line of course was doing figures for the Widow movie, and they looked decent in previews, so I preordered almost all of them, with the Deluxe version coming in from EB Games as scheduled on March 1, 2020. As luck would have it, the figure just as I was finished up another bunch of photos, so I got right to it.

The Deluxe edition of the Black Widow figure costs $10 more than the standard one, coming in at $39.99 CAD. Natasha is garbed in her striking white outfit, and comes with far more accessories than the standard edition, and I need a copy of the standard version to compare headsculpts. Contents are as follows:

- Figure

- Three pairs of hands (closed fist, pistol gripping, melee weapon gripping)

- Pair of pistols

- Pair of sickles

- Widow Bite attack effect

- Various ground explosion effects

- Base with arm

I don't know how accurate it is, but it appears that this particular white suit is effectively a redeco of the black and grey suit of the standard edition.

As expected, Natasha is built on the standard female Marvel Legends body, which is not my thing but it does make writing this article much shorter. For reasons unknown, it appears the chest collapse joint used on the Lighting Pink Ranger still seems to be limited to that figure, and I'm going to guess the rest of the female Ranger cast. So yeah.. limited ankles, limited wrists, no waist, and ugly knee joints make their return here. Nothing spectacular posing wise, but it gets the job mostly done.

The overall presentation of Widow, to me, much better than most of the other female figures I've seen. A big part of it is, ironically, there's less paint on the body. In fact, I think it's limited to the little specs of red and silver, along with the black on her back. Everything else is a separate piece and even then the painting in is minimal, with the most paint probably on her face. While it's not perfect, the masking work and quality of the paint apps themselves appear to be better than my last few check ins.

Furthermore, it appears that the neck on this Widow isn't as long as other figures and that the gaps in her thighs, the ones that normally turn me off, are masked by the holsters. Yes, that doesn't help when the figure is posed, but at least when she's standing Nat looks like a million bucks.

Of course, there's the head itself, or more accurately, the face because the hair perfectly functional, has decent detailing, and is coloured right..end of story. The most recent iteration of the Scarlett Johansson head was on the Infinity War Widow which... didn't look great. Then there was the apparently much improved Endgame one which I wouldn't know about, seeing how we never got it in Canada, and I never got around to going to Target. Well, I'm happy to say that for a mass release Hasbro toy, they did a great job on this figure. It's a pretty good resemblance to the actor, with face printing technology taking care of the painting of the eyes and lips. From the usual arms length distance, these paint apps are sharp and crisp, and far better than what could be accomplished by hand on something this small.. or at least accomplished by the fine, fine people at Hasbro.

The base was an interesting addition.. needed for sure if you want to do all sort of aerial posing. It's a decent quality, and has the Hasbro logo on the base of the arm. The arm is kind of big, if I'm being honest, but it does get the job done. The random explosion effects are.. kind of random if you ask me. Maybe they'll make an appearance in the upcoming GI Joe line or someting.

Build quality is about the same as the rest of the Legends, with softer than I'd like joints, though fortunately it appears packaging didn't warp them. The body itself is alright.. it appears they've moved towards the same plastics used on the Transformers figures now, which is a strange combination of matte finish, and kind of a rubbery feeling. Suit detailing came out decently, so I guess at least from a functionality perspective it's fine. There are some mould lines on the fists that should have been taken off by QC, but I am happy to say that the effects themselves came out quite nicely.

That about wraps it up here - Natasha is just like all the other Legends figures, so you know what to expect, and you either love or hate the tech behind it. But, as stated, and it bears repeating, it appears the combination of improved QC and simplicity of finish has resulted in a very crisp, clean looking figure that I would still keep even if a better quality figure were available down the road (though to be fair, I'd keep it anyway because I'm a hoarder). The face is a very pleasant surprise, and I feel that the face alone is worth the price of entry.

Time to head out for the day - keep an eye open for more Black Widow merch in the months ahead.