So . . . are they worth getting? Yes.
Firstly - if you do what I did and buy the
deal-pairs they work out at £1.25p each; per figure. Now the average price - of
all the figures in a sizable collection - is around £1, once you add up all the
single figures, bags of shite, expensive lots, five of these for a tenner, 8 of
those for a fiver, "Give us a couple
of quid" (15 figs when you get them home and count them), charity-shop
bags, it's about a pound a figure on the year, say. . . and let's be honest
here: A) that's the intrinsic value at most, and B) that should be what you're always
aiming for, this isn't Mesopotamian antiquities we're collecting here!
That's for the 54-60-mil bracket of course;
it's about 50p per figure if you're a small scale collector, it used to be
about 10p averaged over the year, but the big bags of HK shite don't happen
anymore and I regularly watch mixed, loose, lots of HK/Airfix/Revell/Esci getting bid-up to silly-money on evilBay, so
it's about 50p now.
Therefore one-twenty-five for brand-new, larger
scale figures is a bargain.
Secondly, they are worth having, they are
mostly decent sculpts, original designs (question mark over the Dinosaurs) and
of a reasonable size for one task or another whether adorning a self, joining war-games
armies, or getting a starring role in role-play!
Thirdly, they might very-well help bring
youngsters into the collecting fold.
These are a tad on the small side for 54mm,
at around 50mm dead, but they are delicate little princesses, so having a
slighter countenance whilst standing next to your Starlux Napoleonic officer types won't be that incongruous?
They are single mouldings (only the Magical Beasts are multi-part), quite well-done,
not very cartoony and 'different', these are nice figures, will paint-up well
and are definitely worth a punt.
The real disappointment is this set. Don’t
get me wrong, it's savable, they will make worthy role-play or D&D type
character figures, the Centaur is a bit too-chunky to join the Merten versions, even though the scale's
about right.
But overall, this set is cartoony in
execution, it's not severe and can be hidden with paint, but it's also flashy
(the only flashy set) and will need a lot of 'cleaning-up' and then there's
this problem with the separate components not fitting and while I've had half a
go at two of them, they'll all need work.
It's a shame because they are relatively
unique in this vague scale range of 28-40mm (ignoring the [baby] Dragon!), it's
like they came from another factory . . .well they probably did, no; that's not
strictly true; I think the Princesses
and the Magical Beasts share an
origin, but the Princesses - being
stand-alone sculpts - are more easily, better finished.
I'm glad I've got a set, but it's definitely
caveat emptor if you go and buy them,
I'm not recommending this set - sadly. The Griffon and the Werewolf/Ogre will
probably swing-it if you do decide to buy!
Which is a point worth making actually; the
book-box covers do lift; in-store, so you can check the contents of all the
sets before you purchase.
Happy to recommend this set though, if
Dinosaurs are your thing, these are lovely, the plates of the Stegosaur
- for instance - are very fine, rigid enough to hold their shape, yet soft
enough to escape rough-handling damage, surface detail is fine and they remind
me of the WHSmith ones a couple of
years ago, or those nicely painted ones which keep turning up in different pound-shop
brands, TK Maxx et al.
While these are almost the cream of the
crop, I'll try and track down an answer to the 3/4 sculpts question mark (Google says: x2 duplicate pose . . . fussa-russa!), but
they are lovely sculpts, the horns are a bit disappointing, but if you remove
them, you instantly have some really nice-looking horse-flesh, or if you
texture them (the horns) and paint them up they'll look equally good as larger
unicorns in 28/40mm scenarios or small unicorns in 54-60mm settings.
They are 35mm to the shoulder and about 50
to the crown, and may be copies of the Breyer 'Horse Crazy Surprise Horse Painting Kits' range of blind-bag craft collectables, with an added horn?
For the hell of it! Nine colours to work
with if you purchase all four sets, but there are other sets as I said earlier today
and maybe the owls or one of the plaster-casting sets have a grey, light-brown
or some other colours?
All four sets are piled-high in The Works; Fleet, Basingrad and Farnborough
in the last few weeks and still there last time I looked, go; check 'em out for
yourselves, don't take my word for it - it's only an opinion! And if you
wouldn't be seen dead buying stuff like this in the high-street . . . they'll
start turning-up, badly painted, in mixed lots at car-boot sales or in charity
shops in about 18-months time!
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