Our scheduled hobby announcement is interrupted today by a freshly delivered and extremely large box , that is as big as my dog. Arriving early this morning via a very pleasant courier driver is a box from UK eBay seller CollectiblesdirectUK.
Regular readers, may have noticed me mention that I enjoy the odd statue or two, and although I have not bought any of late, yesterday I stumbled on something I just had to have: Sideshow Collectibles/Pop Culture Shock Mixed Media Mortal Kombat Scorpion statue (Regular Edition)...that was a mouth full!
While I don't play enough computer games to warrant blogging about my exploits, I do have a few firm favourites that I still play on and off; when I am not (trying) to scale my miniature mountain; and Mortal Kombat is one of them. Add that to my addiction to sculpted things and you end up with a scary looking house filled with all manner of grizzly looking things, that most people simply won't understand. Luckily for me, I have an understanding partner who is actually a bigger computer game fan than myself and thus allows my geek needs to go on relatively unchecked.
While I have many statues and busts, this is actually the first statue I have bought at the larger scale of 1/4. I had avoided getting anything of this size in the past due to displaying issues, however from what I have seen this scale is starting to become an industry standard outside of the Premium Format. Space logistics aside, the larger scale statue makes for an amazing centre piece with excellent details that surprisingly does not lose any quality of paint.
I was very surprised to see that I got the relatively low number of 39/400, however I am a little confused at the run allocation, as the listing stated a run of 700. Having checked on line, 700 is the run number so I am a making a guess that the advertised 700 run, takes into account the 300 Exclusive Version run.
The statue itself is a little different compared to what I am used to, in that it has a lot of extra magnetic attachments and potential bits that can be easily damage - the spear hand immediately comes to mind, luckily it is made of plastic so there is a little bend. Although my previous Planet Hulks Statue also had magnetic parts, I have not collected enough pieces with magnets to be fully comfortable with them, which is odd as I use them frequently in my miniatures - perhaps its the size/scale issue. Either way magnets are something that I have personally only just encountered when it comes to statue collecting, previously entries to my collection have been single piece casts or casts with very limited and plug and play construction. As a result I tend to handle my newer statues with a greater deal of caution.
A number of people complained about the packaging material when this was first shipped out in 2012, and I can see why. The crumbly polystyrene is a pain to clean up and in my mind is not sufficient packaging to protect a heavy item like this from serious knocks. However it seems I have been incredibly lucky as this statue arrived with no problems, some parts look very fragile and forums have reported a high number of breakage at key parts ranging from the knee cap armour spines, to the more serious cases of glue not holding the magnets or larger pieces like the arms. I am happy to report, that at time of writing, everything seem fine.
A number of the loose parts are for the base or are accessories. Scorpion comes with twin blades, head and hand spear connected to the body via magnets, while the base has two hands shooting out of the lava. The paint job on arms are actually quite good in my opinion, displaying different shades within the skin tone and while the lava is bright, I think it actually works when the overall muted colours of the Scorpion statue are matched to it. The Exclusive Version of this figure came with two alternate heads - flaming and skull face, you never know, I might get lucky and find some of these pieces floating around.
I really like the paint job on this statue, the overall darker look to Scorpion suits me fine as the muted golds make him stand out without looking too tacky; as it usually the problem when working on something that is predominantly yellow/bright in colour, I have to point out though that this is a personal preference, even in my own works I tend to favour dark shadowy tones over overly bright. There are some imperfections in the paint job but these are tiny, a small amount of paint has rubbed off on the right hand, but it is literally a dot or two, nothing of major note and not something I am going to lament.
As previously mentioned, the lava themed base is bright, but I think it works rather well when contrasted off the muted Scorpion. It certainly stands out on the shelf and I actually like the base design, it reminds me a lot of some of my Bowen statues. Having seen the newly released Kitana, these themed bases remind me heavily of the fight stages of each character.
What drew me to this statue over the Syco Collectibles range, is the pose and paint job - to me the pose is iconic, Scorpion is firing the hand spear and anyone who has seen/played Mortal Kombat will instantly get the quote "Get Over Here!!" in mind when seeing this figure, and quite frankly for me this is where is counts. To me there is no point picking up an IP if you are not going to capitalise on the most popular parts of that IP, and while I don't see the manufacturers doing "Fatalities" based statues, I am content in the knowledge that the sculptures will most likely pull iconic poses/moves from the game and bring to life in statue form.
This figure probably does not have the same amount of polish when compared to my Bowen collection, but for a non premium figure, it is of astounding quality. As I have mentioned early buyers of this product did experience many manufacturing faults but these seem to have been mainly with the early Exclusive release...something I would be angry about too due to the premium price, however I am lucky to have gotten a statue in excellent condition with no major faults. I will be looking to add to my Mortal Kombat collection, I have my eyes on the recently released Kitana statue and of course we have Goro and Shao Khan coming in 2014, again I will probably only go for the regular versions of these releases but first I need to check if they belong to the same collection as Scorpion. With a number of manufacturers with the Mortal Kombat license, I want to try my best to stick to the one brand, for simplicity sake and financial sanity: After all I still have lots of toy soldiers to buy!
Thanks for reading,
DiStudios
The 14th legion
**Gallery shots will be taken of this statue and a general statue gallery put up, no eta on that however as the focus of this blog remains - miniatures**
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