BSG Morning After Review

[Tothiro]

EDIT/UPDATE: This has grown to be much longer than I thought it would be - in the interest of brevity here is a jump to my post in which I lay out the scale problems and show 8" vs 10" or 1/9th scale vs 1/7.2nd scale, which is what the Colonial heads and outfits became.

This is a jump to my Cylon Chop Shop modifications.

Hokay... First I want to say that by no means is it, nor has it ever been my intention to slag any efforts made. (Hell Jason should know I'm a fan - I'm rewatching the entire run of Rockford Files in sequence at his podcast's insistence for Mego's Sake!)
Anything that I type by way of critique is meant as constructive, and having worked a very, very, very long time making dolls and toys both for hire and for myself as well as buying more toys than one person could reasonably expect in a lifetime, I am not the type of person who's going to nitpick about one paint chip on the ankle of a 3 3/4" figures deco because there are bigger things to be upset over.

Seriously. Trust me on that.

I really have to think BBP and all remego related are fans and want to put out exactly what they want to buy. I have to think that somewhere, someplace they're not getting their money's worth in terms of QC or product manufacture... I suppose these could actually be EXACTLY how they were meant to turn out, but I am convinced that they can't possibly be.
Wanting to see a company (that I really want to support) regularly put out product I want to put money into which will help them be a success is not unreasonable of me, is it?



Review in a bit.

[BlackKnight]

Holy **** Batman ....
So, ... how Bigs the Helmet ?

.... Whats the word on the Cylons ? ....

[powersthatbe]

yeah i don't want to downplay any efforts made as well,i know BBP! are as big of fans as we are,but that head is too big,i might then swap outfits unto a Dr.Mego head/body.(maybe a peter parker/shazam head which is my favorite mego head.)

[BlackKnight]

^^^ But if you do that , the Helmet will be 3 sizes too big, no ?

[Tothiro]

@BK - that's coming first up, actually!
@PTB - I'm doing a jacket swap and helmet compare as well.

Okay so first off - things that came out well and I really liked:

[Tothiro]

Cylon:


The backpack was detached/flawed when it came out of the package. The actual backpack portion of the chest clam is put together in two additional pieces. I don't know why that is. There's a U shaped yoke which acts as a top-plate around the back of the figures neck, and it tucks into (or is supposed to tuck into) an actual backpack unit. It really seems like a useless mold to me, as the backpack and yoke pieces could be one part, but even more than that - I don't see why the whole back half of the clam wasn't one piece with an engineered vertical wafer spacer on the inside if torso movement was a problem. But whatever - that's a production thing.
From the consumer side: The parts don't fit together properly on mine.

Fit one side and the other is out of alignment, and vice versa...

It's a cyanoacrylate superglue keeping them together. A lot of parts are factory crazy glued actually - the boot tops, the clam portions, and I think the forearm cuffs. the glue crazed the bottom of the neck on my fig, and the head was hard to get turning at the start.

Cylon still has gutbuster donut special issues. I would not have made the clamshell and pelvis piece one single unit. With the angle that the front section pushes out, the top portion would have easily allowed the bottom portion to rest inside, and be smaller - like actually fit the hips.
speaking of... the legs don't move forward. the knees bend 90 degrees as you expect, but the way in which the torso clam is made completely prohibits forward thigh motion, they can't sit down in any way. (No pilot wings for you, toasterhead!)
Here we see the back skirt:

Which is way too little fabric in a "hospital gown" kind of way. It needed to be about 150% to 200% as wide.

Hey, you know what I just said about the legs, right?
The arms don't move forward. Really. This is as far forward as you can bend both the shoulders and elbow together:


The forearm cuffs are engineered too long, so that they block any bending at the elbow (you can get 15 to 20 degrees out of it) and the shoulder sections are also improperly engineered so that the arms do not move forward, backward, or out.

Sadly this figure has been made to have basically 5 points of articulation - neck, knees and wrists. I would say how it fares when reconfigured and swapped to a mego body, but i can't right now... the forearm cuffs, sleeves, and forearm pieces are glued together into a solid block, and I've tried dremeling out the forearms but I'm going to have to work on them for a while to get the armor parts free. Stupid frustrating. It may be possible that the cuffs can ride forward and allow more elbow angle, but glued firmly in place who can tell?
Also, there's no loop or scabbard for the sword. It doesn't attach to the armor or suit in any way.
The gun also doesn't fit the hand terribly well. The hand is molded in almost a flat palm way, and the thumb doesn't curve at all, it's an open Y yoke - so you push the gun into place and it wants to pop back out. A bit of hand paint came off the inside of the thumb the first time he took up arms.

I like the head... the dimensions are wrong (too narrow in the lower half - the show helmet was designed to fit on an extra's head and this sculpt isn't) but that's ok... it's still cute.

Update: My Cylon rebuild mission is going on over in :::this thread:::

[Brown Bear]

I am beyond excited for these...hopefully the martian head and restricted mobility doesn't hinder my excitement. That Cylon looks awesome.

[Harbingerboy]

Wow. Thanks for the review. I was waiting to see these in hand before committing. Perfect example of why I'm wary of the necessary monster that is the pre-order. Sculpts look great, but that giant noggin is killer disappointing, moreso than the Cylon's articulation issues for me. I guess I can still at least commit to a MOC set, but the potential for cool has really settled at kitsch for me though, which is arguably suitable for this license. I just hope my next wave of Ventures and Twilight Zone figs don't show up with giant heads!!

EDIT: Yeah, I can't wait to see the helmet now.

[Iron Mego]

That head is pretty large. Guess, for once, shrinkage did not occur.

[rche]

W..... I just hope my next wave of Ventures and Twilight Zone figs don't show up with giant heads!!

EDIT: Yeah, I can't wait to see the helmet now.

except for Billy - the Quizboy needs a giant head.