Monday, April 24, 2017

April 2017 Haul #2: Hot Toys 1/6th scale Black Panther, Shoretrooper and Bandai Yoda model kit

This is my second haul this month (check out my earlier haul HERE) and I got the Hot Toys MMS363 Captain America: Civil War 1/6th scale Black Panther Collectible Figure, along with Hot Toys MMS389 Rogue One: A Star Wars Story 1/6th scale Shoretrooper Collectible Figure plus the Bandai Star Wars 1/6th scale Yoda model kit. Black Panther took a while to arrive but I was caught off guard by the Shoretrooper. Bandai Yoda was just the icing on the cake, unplanned but certainly interesting. More on that later.


In the 2016 superhero film Captain America: Civil War which was a little like the continuation from the Avengers: Age of Ultron because almost everybody who was in the film was in this one as well, we were introduced to a new Marvel character, the Black Panther. I think it was great casting Chadwick Boseman as T'Challa / Black Panther, the prince of the African nation of Wakanda allied with Stark. I've known the character since his comic book days and it was exciting to see the character being realized on the big screen.

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The box packaging design is a nod to the Marvel civil war comic book covers which were divided into half, with the art shown on the top half and just a white box below highlighting the words "Civil War".  It's a nice concept but I would have preferred a full bleed image of the character instead.


Hot Toys MMS363 Captain America: Civil War 1/6th scale Black Panther Collectible Figure has absolutely not much accessories except for a couple of interchangeable gloved hands and the standard display stand. I don't pose my figures with the stand as I much prefer them to be free standing and interacting with each other. And you can only have the figure with a pair of hands at any one time so the other hands stay in the box. What else is there? Nada, nought, zip, zilch, zero, bupkis - many words but still one meaning and that's coming up empty. It would have been really nice on Hot Toys part to include a 1/6th scale Chadwick Boseman head sculpt for the unmasked look.


So why get this figure? The costume! I love the design of it, that it's not just black like in the comic books but there are fine details everywhere. According to the costume designers, the Black Panther costume is a combination of a practical costume and visual effects, featuring a vibranium mesh weave similar to chainmail. Costume designer Judianna Makovsky called the Black Panther costume "difficult" since "you needed sort of a feline body, but it’s hard and practical at the same time. You needed a feeling of some sort of ethnicity in there, but of a world [Wakanda] we weren’t really creating yet, so you didn’t want to go too far and say too much about that world." And you get to see this costume replicated in highly accurate 1/6th scale by Hot Toys. Check out the preview pics HERE.


Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is the first installment of the Star Wars Anthology series, set immediately before the events of the original Star Wars film. The cast includes Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Riz Ahmed, Ben Mendelsohn, Donnie Yen, Mads Mikkelsen, Alan Tudyk, Jiang Wen and Forest Whitaker. Rogue One follows a group of rebels on a mission to steal the plans for the Death Star, the Galactic Empire's superweapon. The Star Wars standalone film introduced us to some new troopers, alongside the familiar ones we are used to seeing, like the Stormtroopers. Among the new troopers were the Coastal Defender Stormtroopers, more commonly known as Shoretroopers, a specialized variant of the Galactic Empire's stormtroopers trained and equipped for combat in tropical environments.


Stationed at the top secret Imperial security complex on the tropical planet Scarif, shoretroopers patrolled the beaches and bunkers of the facility. Shoretroopers operate, effectively, as Sergeants which allow them to command small squads of regular stormtroopers. There were at least three distinct ranks of shoretroopers, all with unique armor markings. Regular shoretroopers featured sand colored armor, with a red band around their right arm and a white stripe around their left shoulder guard. Squad leaders were identified by a sand blue stripe that went along the top of their chest plates and onto the top of their shoulder guards. Squad leaders also sported a kama attached to their belt.


Shoretrooper captains had almost all of their chest plates blue, along with a small plate of armor that was on their left side. Their right shoulder guard was sand colored, but their left shoulder guard was all sand blue, save for the white stripe. Further down the same arm, there were stripes of sand blue and yellow.


So this Hot Toys MMS389 Rogue One: A Star Wars Story 1/6th scale Shoretrooper Collectible Figure is actually a Shoretrooper Captain. You can see the preview pics HERE


And then there's this Bandai Star Wars 1/6th scale Yoda Model Kit. Having gotten the Bandai 1/6th scale Star Wars Stormtrooper Model Kit which turned out to be quite impressive with full articulation (see the full action figure review posted on my toy blog HERE), I decided to try my hand at this 1/6th scale Yoda model kit.


There are two sizes included, the 1/6th scale version and a 1/12th scale version. The 1/12th scale Yoda is a statue when assembled but the 1/6th scale version does have articulation as well. More on plastic model kit Yoda in the upcoming posts.


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