[Crown Athlete]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Den-O

Well. I have the set in hand. I'm sad to report that it's a mess. I'm in the middle of shooting a full gallery and review for the site to elaborate my thoughts on it. But the short of it is, it's bad.

The core Gridman figure itself is pitifully small. About a head shorter than any Figuart or comparable 1/12 figure. If you want a nicely scaled version of just Gridman, the upcoming Figma looks like the real winner. Gridman has very poor articulation and what is there isn't particularly useful either. Hands fall out of the wrist joints easily, making holding Samurai Calibur very difficult.

Vehicles look nice at a glance, but parts pop off easily and freely. Plastic feels very cheap and inadequate. Locking mechanisms are iffy at best resulting in an unstable and floppy full power combo.

The afformentioned label sheet is such a ridiculous switcheroo. Revealing it just prior to release when it was suggested through out the entire production process that these were paint apps and not labels, is incredibly shady. Labels are of somewhat decent quality but eventually will fail. Likewise the articulated hands having to be built is another stupidly kept secret. Building models is one thing. But in a figure set that's nearly $150 after shipping, having to build part of it is just unacceptable. The same can be said for the orange hoses that have to be cut off sprues and added by the buyer.

To top off all of this, I ordered two of these sets. One for myself, one for another local friend. Wouldn't you know it, when I opened mine, the articulated stage arm was just missing. So there's no way to properly use the included display base with my core Gridman. Granted the other one I ordered did have all it's parts, but honestly on a set this pricey and supposedly of a premium nature, a part was missing? Out of the two I bought one was incomplete, wo how many more are like mine? I've certainly never had that happen with a Bandai product of this calibur before.

This is a shoddy release that was delayed multiple times and appears at the last second to have simply cut costs as much as possible resulting in a pretty sub par set that no one, and I mean no one, should pay full price for.

Have you reached out to GSC about the missing part? Their customer service is very good. They've sent me replacement pieces for free, even when one of them was my fault(broke a sword).