SIDESHOW VS THE OTHERS

I begin to understand why Sideshow Collectibles is the actual Darling of polystone figures on the Market. No other studio has the quality of finishing in casting and painting as Sideshow, besides creative modelling. Prime 1 Studios, is a good contender but doing such gigantic pieces it gets easier to do a good finishing. Although, for my taste, Prime 1 Studios creations are overall too “bulky”. Even the recent Harley Queen. I imagine if they get to do a Hulk statue. I bet it would weight 400 lbs and looks like the Michelin mascot painted green! Hahahaha.

Too bulky for my taste. And too big too.

I was very excited with Tweeterhead’s Batman & Robin 1966 series version but I saw a buyer picture of Batman and the finishing of the leg looked like cement not to mention the painting of the cheeks. I big disappointment, mine go straight to eBay without even open to see the pieces up close.

Look at Batman's arm finishing

Another disappointment was with Project Triforce Mirror’s Edge Catalyst Collector’s Edition statue. I looked awesome on the promotional pics. I still think the concept of the piece phenomenal; instead of going the easy way and put Faith on a gravity defying badass pose jumping from some building, they chose to synthetize the story of her life in a diorama which shows a sad little Faith girl on one end and the actual freedom fighter she became on the other end separated by a cracked glass. Very emotional and out of the box design. Bet it used in game 3D models to build the figure. Everything looked perfect, so perfect in fact that I ordered one at Triforce (I liked the first Mirror’s Edge very much). But then I saw some fan pics took from some fair and the painting job is just lame. Gone were the mat tones from the promo pics since all the blacks and reds of the finished product are shiny, glossy, ugly. Besides this the painting finishing looked sloppy. Another one that goes sealed to eBay. I’m on my toes about the Evolve’s Goliath I’ve pre-ordered last year and will come in October, if everything goes fine with the production (as they haven’t gone until now). At least the Goliath is all shades of grey and is a huge piece there isn’t much room to painting ruining this one so I hope I’ll get a stunning massive monster for my collection. So no glossy shades of grey on the Goliath pretty please Triforce!

 

The promotional image

The real deal

I’m not saying Sideshow is perfect. (Hot Toys is perfect but I don’t like action figures). Far from that. But Sideshow is evolving very fast and things I didn’t like about their figures are changing. First of all the face of female characters. Apart from one Red Sonja figure, I never liked any female face Sideshow did… until Batgirl, Captain Marvel and principally Dark Phoenix arrived. Before them all faces looked the same, now they’re trying to give each female figure a different yet beautiful face and it is working very fine to me now. I’ve preordered Dark Phoenix solemnly because of her face. It’s so beautiful yet so normal it looks somebody you know or could cross on the street. Even though I hate transparencies effects on my statues I accepted that PVC fire “phoenix” (so ugly and mediocre, an excuse to make her fluctuating) just to have that face.

This face... oh, this face...

The girls’ faces is a big evolution to Sideshow. They’re getting more creative on the poses as well. Not all, I must admit. The Masters of Universe series (both He-Man and Skeletor are five stars to me) poses are improved copies Pop Shock Culture He-Man Show statues, even the bases are similar. But the new Deadpool has a hell of a cool pose I’ve never seen before. So slowly Sideshow is moving away from improving poses from older studios and creating their own. Of course Deadpool is a character that gives the sculptor a lot of freedom but so is Spider-Man, Daredevil, Black Panther and all these acrobatic heroes. Hope to see more creative poses from Sideshow, even though I must admit no studio I know take risks with poses. They all go for the cool heroic pose. After all you cannot take many risks when a limited edition piece is so expensive.

Looks promising...

Talking about pricing, one more thing about Sideshow and all the others collectible figures studios. I know it is a fast growing business but you shouldn’t have fast growing prices of your figures this way. It’s absurd a figure with a 2500 copies edition to cost $500. Of course with such a huge quantities of figures produced the costs are watered down, instead of growing. But I believe things will slowly change as more and more quality players enter the ring. Iron Studios from Brazil is one of the newcomers and the quality of their productions is improving fast. I wouldn’t mention but one of the more expensive and worst studios out there is First4Figures (with rare exceptions). They are much better than at the start, but they have a lot of ground to cover if they want to survive beyond their Nintendo exclusivity license.

Meh.

So besides its flaws Sideshow is a studio I - and I believe all collectors - grown to love and trust. It’s not too heretic to say it’s the new Bowen Studios when the subject is polystone images in terms of dominance and fame. Hot Toys dominates with all merits the realm of sixth scale articulated figures. And PVC figures is the business of Japanese, they’re master in anime PVC figures and I love to see what they’re doing with Western-side statues like that Harley Queen seated on a ball from Kotobukyia (if I’m not mistaken) that is simply the most beautiful Harley Queen figure I’ve ever saw (and I saw a lot). I ordered the black & white limited edition of this figure to go along with my b&w Batman figures and am completely in love with her.

Hot!

Well that’s enough for a first post. I would like to hear your comments.