- Joined
- Jun 4, 2015
I ended up getting that Armada Starcream remake today. I have NO FUCKING CLUE what the fuck every internet reviewer ever has been saying about the plastic on this thing "feeling cheaper". It feels exactly the same as all the other figures I got, but it does seem like it's made almost entirely out of the harder plastic as opposed to having bits made of that slightly softer plastic. It's really a great figure but there's a few oddities with QC and some other shit that bugs me me about it so I'll list them in a way that hopefully breaks up the text enough for it to be legible.
1. The red paint is severely mismatched to the plastic. It's not that visible in this photo because I used the flash but I thought I ended up getting one of those infamous"pre-yellowed" figures I've heard nightmare stories about before I realized that clearly was not the case. I can't find any info about this shit online so I'm just gonna assume i's one of those unspoken things nobody that has a strong enough following fucking mentions when they review it instead going to rag on about the "cheap plastic" and act like it's either a meh figure or one of the worst things ever made, all reviewers with followings also INSIST to have his thruster vents in the optional g1 style position for like the majority of their reviews which makes my monkey brain fucking angry but that's another story.
2. They SEVERELY skimped on the paint detail. Proportionally this is one of the most accurate updates to a character, but so much easy to put on details are missing for no reason whatsoever. Was adding the grey red and black paint detail that's spots are actually sculpted into the figure just that hard? The feet seem to be even sculpted in a way where if you painted the lower leg armor detail baked into them it wouldn't scrape with the joint, same case for the other parts like the small wings on the intake cannons that flip over and the little red joint flaps. Whoever designed this figure designed it clearly with those spots being painted in mind, yet there is no paint there. The piddly ass wing sword's paint was removed last second before release and they didn't reallocate that supposed saved budget anywhere. The black detail on the arms doesn't even wrap around the side where it should making his arms look kind of weird due to it, could they not have changed that last second like they did the sword?
3. The sword accessories he comes with are piddly and tiny compared to literally any sword accessory ever, and they have no proper storage that looks good. It sucks because the sculpting on them is great, they just made the things too damn small and didn't do the same thing the thrilling 30 version did where the swords folded to fit under the wings. There's cheap 3d printed stuff people make that fixes this problem with the star saber but not the wing sword.
4. joint tolerance QC issues in modern figures, but this one brings me back to the Universe Galvatron tolerance QC stuff. Tabs either don't fully lock in or don't stay locked in and flop out, some things are too loose or too tight and it's completely dependent on if you get lucky apparently. I seem to have gotten lucky with mine on everything but the nosecone and the back part that optionally clips down not staying locked in if I clip them in. His left and right arm joints are slightly wobbly but nothing like what I've seen on other people's copies. I think it's tied to how the arms are clamped in when you open the figure as I was really careful trying to get this thing out of it's plastic tie hell prison and the arms were kinda held in at a stiff and awkward angle compared to the rest of the figure. I'm used to fiddly bullshit so the hinge annoyance is minute.
2. They SEVERELY skimped on the paint detail. Proportionally this is one of the most accurate updates to a character, but so much easy to put on details are missing for no reason whatsoever. Was adding the grey red and black paint detail that's spots are actually sculpted into the figure just that hard? The feet seem to be even sculpted in a way where if you painted the lower leg armor detail baked into them it wouldn't scrape with the joint, same case for the other parts like the small wings on the intake cannons that flip over and the little red joint flaps. Whoever designed this figure designed it clearly with those spots being painted in mind, yet there is no paint there. The piddly ass wing sword's paint was removed last second before release and they didn't reallocate that supposed saved budget anywhere. The black detail on the arms doesn't even wrap around the side where it should making his arms look kind of weird due to it, could they not have changed that last second like they did the sword?
3. The sword accessories he comes with are piddly and tiny compared to literally any sword accessory ever, and they have no proper storage that looks good. It sucks because the sculpting on them is great, they just made the things too damn small and didn't do the same thing the thrilling 30 version did where the swords folded to fit under the wings. There's cheap 3d printed stuff people make that fixes this problem with the star saber but not the wing sword.
4. joint tolerance QC issues in modern figures, but this one brings me back to the Universe Galvatron tolerance QC stuff. Tabs either don't fully lock in or don't stay locked in and flop out, some things are too loose or too tight and it's completely dependent on if you get lucky apparently. I seem to have gotten lucky with mine on everything but the nosecone and the back part that optionally clips down not staying locked in if I clip them in. His left and right arm joints are slightly wobbly but nothing like what I've seen on other people's copies. I think it's tied to how the arms are clamped in when you open the figure as I was really careful trying to get this thing out of it's plastic tie hell prison and the arms were kinda held in at a stiff and awkward angle compared to the rest of the figure. I'm used to fiddly bullshit so the hinge annoyance is minute.
