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Packaging - ***
The packaging is sturdy, is eye catching, and has fairly descriptive and
useful text. The nicest touch is the ability to see all the
accessories easily.
Sculpting - Klaang, Archer, T'Pol ***1/2; Mayweather ***;
Reed **1/2; Silik **
Gentle Giant did the work on these, using Real Scan. The results, as
is often the case with Real Scan, vary greatly.
Klaang, Archer and T'Pol are the winners in this
category. T'Pol is really the closest to perfection, and it looks
extremely good. Unfortunately, her body sculpt isn't nearly as good as
her head, and her pelvis has an odd position, along with a truly funky bend
in her right forearm.
Likewise, Klaang and Archer have their minor issues.
Klaang is the closest in overall sculpt to perfection, but I don't like the
'action pose' they decided to give his hair. Archer has a great
overall body sculpt, and it really does look like Scott Bakula - except the
nose. Now I'll be happy to admit that Bakula has a big nose - having
one myself, it's always nice to see a big-nosed leading man - but he's not
Jimmy Durante. The Real Scan snoze came out huge.
The other three are all below these in quality.
Mayweather isn't awful, although comparing him to the photo he ends up
looking a bit more generic than the character really is. Reed falls a
little lower on the scale, due to his having a bad hair day on his visit to
Gentle Giant. The left side is flatter than the right, and while I
appreciate that might be close to reality, I prefer a little symmetry in my
action figures, at least the humans.
Silik rounds out the set as bad. That's unfortunate,
since he's a very cool alien. They did a wonderful job on the detail,
but the detail on Fozzie Bear is great too - but he's not a Silik. The
nose on this figure is just awful in comparison to the source material, and
they added a terrible mouth sculpt. Look at the closeup at the very
top of the screen and tell me, in complete honesty, that he doesn't look
like Beavis with a bad case of dermatitis.
Paint - Klaang, T'Pol ****; Archer, Reed, Mayweather
***1/2, Silik ***
The paint ops don't vary quite as much as the sculpting. Klaang is a
standout though due to the greater complexity of the work on his uniform and
face. I also put T'Pol at the top, as she had the nicest, cleanest and
most attractive face paint of the set.
Archer, Reed and Mayweather are all very well done though,
and only fall behind due to the slightly less complex paint ops. Poor
Silik pulls in behind again, this time due to terrible eyes on the four I've
seen so far. Everyone has had crossed eyes, and it seems very odd
considering that the eyes on all the other figures have been well done.
Articulation - Klaang ****; T'Pol, Reed, Archer,
Mayweather ***1/2, Silik **1/2
Poor Silik. He just can't catch a break.
In general, these figures have a great ball jointed neck,
ball jointed shoulders, cut biceps, elbows, wrists, waist, thighs, knees and
ankles. I think they may have cut thighs as well, but some work and
others feel stuck. Some have slightly better ankle articulation than
others, but overall these figures are extremely well articulated.
To hide many of the body joints, like the hips and waist,
the uniforms are made of a soft rubber in these areas, similar to what we
first saw with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. This works fairly well,
although they way it bunches up around the thighs and stomach when they are
sitting is sure to cause some complaints. Some folks have had troubles
with the rubber pieces lining up well with the rest of the lines of the body
(zippers, creases, etc.) but there was no problem with any of the figures I
picked up.
The only real issue I see is whether these will last very
long. Many people have reported problems with some of the Sleepy
Hollow and CT, HD figures where soft rubber was used, and a few months later
began to break down and degrade. Only time will tell if that becomes
an issue here.
So why did poor Silik get beat up again? Because for
some reason that is entirely unclear, he has no elbow joints. Not only
that, but his arms are a rubbery material, rather than hard plastic.
What was the thought behind such a terrible design move? It really
hurts what could have been at least a decent figure otherwise.
Accessories - Klaang ***1/2; Silik, Archer, T'pol, Reed ***;
Mayweather **1/2;
Accessories bring another mixed bag. Every figure comes with a
couple standard items - extra hands, and an 'Enterprise' stand.
The stands are nice, but nothing exciting. There's no peg holes in
the feet, or pegs on the stands, and the figures don't really require them,
so I could actually be happier with out.
Some of the figures have more sets of hands than other, but I noticed a
big problem on more than one figure - the extra hands are identical to the
ones they already have! Mayweather is the worst in this situation,
since both pairs of hands are identical, and his only other accessories are
the phaser, tricorder and communicator that are reused across the line.
Archer is outfitted in the same way as Mayweather, but at least his
second set of hands was different than the first. T'Pol has three
extra hands, the same phaser and communicator, but her own special
scanner. Silik comes with two of his Suliban phasers, and four - count
them four! extra hands. But again, of these four hands, one of the extra
lefts is identical to his original left.
Reed had the opportunity to stand out, with a terrific carrying case, but
his extra left hand matches the original again, and the case simply carries
two more of the same identical phasers.
Klaang is the winner in the accessories contest, with an extra set of
hands (again, one of them is identical to the original), knife, Klingon
phaser, and well sculpted 'sword of honor'.
I'm not a big fan of extra hands - maybe one set, but three or four
hands? At least Art Asylum has greatly improved the pegs and holes
used with these, and you won't have as much trouble removing them and
replacing them as you may have had with CT, HD.
Value - ***
At eight bucks each, they are right about where you'd expect. But
if you end up paying $10 or more through a comic shop or on-line retailer,
you're reaching into a range that's simply too much for this much accessory
reuse.
Overall - Klaang ****; Archer, T'Pol ***1/2; Reed, Mayweather ***; Silik **1/2
I ended up picking up all six, but if I had to do it over I would have
completely skipped Silik, and thought long and hard about Reed and
Mayweather. The three figures to pick up are Archer, T'Pol and Klaang,
and only the serious Enterprise fan needs to complete the set.
It's not that they are terrible - the articulation is great,
and the sculpting above average for the most part. But there's lots of
accessory reuse, some of the sculpts are certainly worse than the others,
and the duplicate hands is a serious problem. Hopefully it's just a QA
issue, and they really didn't think you wanted extras of the exact same
hands.
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