Look what we have here!! Sideshow has just announced the upcoming sale of the AVP/AVPR Predator Spear replica!

The Ministry of Info has posted a little something you can check out here. No word on if this is collapsible or anything (I doubt it is) but you can expect this to be up for order next week. I’ll post a heads up as always

Enjoy!
Dan

Hey guys! I just received another update from Cinemaquette! This time we have the box size and weight! First off, here’s a photo of the shipping box (Actual product box will not be revealed):

Outer carton dimension: 34.25 * 28.5 * 24.75(inch)
Net weight: 52.2 LBS
Gross weight: 88.5 LBS

That is one big ass box LOL!

Enjoy!
Dan

Hey guys, RUN to Sideshow, the new AvP Scar Helmet is up for pre-order and will sell out VERY fast! Grab it or check out all the info by clicking here!

More pics HERE!

Enjoy!
Dan

Hello everyone! Hope you all had a great weekend and for those of you that are gearing up for snow, hope you are out enjoying the last weekends of T-Shirt weather! Let’s start off the work week with some awesome new products from Sideshow… Friday we saw some pretty awesome new goodies posted. First up, Sideshow has announced the upcoming sale of the AvP Scar Predator Mask!

No details have been released as of yet, but they did post an official announcement on the Sideshow site, which you can see by clicking here. You can expect this to go up for order on Friday of this week, and you can bet this will sell out after what we experienced with the Wolf release!

Next up, Sideshow has posted the pre-order for their pretty awesome looking T-800 Premium Format statue! This is definitely one of the better Arnie likenesses Sideshow has released.

This is selling out super fast, the Exclusive edition sold out in a matter of hours, so if you want to grab the regular edition, you can order it or view all the photos by clicking here!

Here are some specs and info on the piece:

Product Size: 22″ H x 9.5″ W x 9.5″ D
Product Weight: 12.00 lbs
Box Size: 24.00″ H x 11.50″ W x 11.50″ L

The T-800 Premium Format figure is a stunning 1:4 scale museum quality piece. Grenade launcher in hand, the Terminator stands 22 inches tall atop the display base. Each piece is cast in high-quality polystone, then hand-painted and hand-finished. The figure is dressed in an amazing miniature replica of the costume constructed of real fabrics, and the base is individually hand-numbered for authenticity. This stunning figure is the ultimate representation of T-800, an outstanding addition to any collection.

The last piece that I thought looked pretty badass is the new Venom Legendary Scale Bust, and again, this thing is selling like crazy!

It’s not as HUGE as the full size bust released quite awhile ago, but the detail is simply amazing and if the paint is as good as the prototype, WOW! You can pre-order this bust or see more photos of it by clicking here. Here’s more info on the piece from Sideshow:

Product Size: 10″ H x 10″ W x 9.5″ L
Product Weight: 12.00 lbs
Box Size: 12.00″ H x 12.00″ W x 11.50″ L

Sideshow Collectibles and Marvel Comics proudly present the latest addition to the Marvel Legendary Scale Bust series: Venom. This outstanding bust meets the standard of excellence that is the hallmark of a Sideshow sculpture. Hand-finished, hand-painted and cast in the highest quality polystone, the Venom Legendary Scale Bust is a perfect addition to any Spider-Man or Marvel collection!

Also, you guys may have read my review of the Sideshow Predator 1 Diorama Exclusive Edition that I posted here a couple of weeks ago. Well, if you missed out on this awesome sold-out piece, the statue used in the review has been re-boxed and is available in the shop! I only have 1 available and you can buy it by clicking here! The asking price covers the cost of the statue and the taxes, duty and brokerage I had to pay to get it here. I am not asking a penny more than what it cost me!

That’s about it for now guys, more coming soon though as always!

Hello everyone! Tonight I am EXTREMELY excited to bring you an update from Cinemaquette’s company President, who graciously took some questions from me on behalf of many collectors who had some concerns with the AMAZING upcoming Predator 1 Maquette.

The forums are all abuzz about this $2000 collectible as we are quickly approaching the mid-November date when production units start shipping to customers! Here are some of the questions and issues people are talking about and that I was able to ask Cinemaquette.

1. It would appear that there was an error in some press releases, because several collectible sites posted that this statue would have Silicone skin. This naturally became a huge uproar due to the questions of durability in Silicone and the care and maintenance in keeping that much skin dust free. Here is the official word:

We did have plans to originally utilize silicon in our Predator Maquette, but after further R&D and production, we have decided not to use Silicon on the piece to preserve the durability of our product. We have used silicon in the past for just the heads, but to cover an entire upper body would also have made it not cost prohibitive. The silicon would no doubt be able to survive for a lifetime, but to keep the entire body clean and dust free for that lifetime would just drive collectors crazy. Believe me, I have entire silicon items and the natural properties of silicon is that it loves to attract dust. This is another reason why we pack colorless powder with our other Silicon Cinemaquette. So to answer your question, we did not use silicon on the Predator nor did we every promise anyone that we would.

2. There is a huge amount of concern over what is called “The White Glove Treatment” for Cinemaquette direct customers. Does this mean that anyone that has purchased this statue from a retailer such as BBTS will receive less QC and a higher chance of receiving a unit with errors or in some way defective? CM says:

White Glove Service, this seems to be a very common questions recently. Every product that we ship, either directly to a member or to our Authorized Dealers get our White Glove Service. Now, before I say anything further, let me state that this is for the domestic USA only. International accounts get their product direct from our factory in China and although our quality control department there is responsible for all of the inspections, the International dealers are required to inspect them again prior to delivery of goods to their customers. If a member ever has any issue with their product, they may take it up directly with Cinemaquette.com to get the issue resolved. Customers who purchase it through an Authorized Dealer must first contact the dealer and resolve the issue there first. The dealer will then contact us directly and we will replace or repair the product with them. It seems that this step requires a bit more work, but we respect the customer client relationship that our dealers have with their own customers. Ultimately, any outstanding issues will be settled directly with us. So no matter where or who(Cinemaquette.con or Authorized Dealer) you buy it from, you can rest assure that you will be satisfied with your piece or your money back. I must finally conclude that buying a Cinemaquette second hand is not recommended as we do not warrant the condition nor can we honor our services in repairing or replacing the item. Buyers must be cautious and realize that they are buying it on their own risk.

3. When does this start shipping to Cinemaquette customers and retailers?

Mid-November we begin to ship to our customers and our retailers will receive most of their allocated units as well.

A HUGE thank you to Mr. Sohn for taking the time to answer these questions! He also provided me with some great photos to show you guys the dimensions of the base and the figure so you guys can prepare your display areas! Cinemaquette uses a 24 x 24 x 36 display cube at their booth for this statue, but here are the actual piece measurements (click for a large picture):

Enjoy guys! The 4 year wait is almost over!!
Dan

At last it has finally arrived! Weeks AFTER the regular editions shipped, those of us waiting for Sideshow’s EXCLUSIVE version of the Predator 1 Diorama are finally getting visits from our local friendly delivery folks and tonight we check it out from all angles!

The Exclusive edition includes 2 head options… the default masked head, as well as a sexy closed-mouth unmasked head option. The packaging gurus at Sideshow did a great job making sure this beauty survived shipping, despite the fact that the blades, hands, arms, head etc… are all pre-attached and look VERY fragile. The only thing not connected to the body already is the cannon and base, which have their own compartments. The base consists of the tree section, and the black bottom with the raised Predator title. Should you wish to wall-mount this statue, you simply pop the tree section off the base and it can be mounted with a couple of screws (not included). Once assembled, it’s quite an impressive site.

I did have some trouble inserting the cannon for some reason… The cannon has a rounded tip that squares off, and you can tell that the tip and square portion should fit in the square hole on the backpack, but I just can’t get mine to fit and I’ve scared I’ll break it. So yeah, I can’t get the square peg to fit in the square hole, go figure… I never was good at geometry (or anything else math related for that matter).

Looking at the sculpt, there are a couple of things that seem slightly off if you really want to look for things to criticize, and even then you may not agree with me at all:

1. The unmasked head seems too small from certain angles. Now, I know this goes against most of the complaints being the head is too big (Hot Toys and Cinemaquette), but the head is supposed to be slightly oversized compared to the body. When you look at this one from the side, the head looks too small to me.

2. Second issue is with the backpack and cannon… it seems all shifted too far up and far forward on him to the point that the backpack and cannon stick up further than his head! Maybe it’s the way they did the pose or something, but it looks weird. I mean, he wouldn’t even be able to turn his face to the side, he’d get a face full of backpack.

Other than that, the sculpt looks awesome and very detailed. Castings are crisp and the base is WONDERFUL! The tree has tons of rough bark details and moss and looks absolutely perfect for the piece, so a huge round of applause on that.

I have to admit when I first saw photos of the unmasked head option, I was worried because it looked pretty… meh. But, it’s actually better in person even though I don’t like the closed mouth pose.

In my humble opinion, the only reason a Predator piece should have a closed mouth pose is to fit a helmet over top of it should you desire. Seeing as this is a non-issue on this piece as it comes with two heads, why on earth is it closed mouth?! I guess Sideshow decided to listen to that minority that wanted a closed mouth pose for once hehe… way to be heard all 5 of you that wanted a closed mouth lol! So it is nice, but I’ll be displaying this with the masked head for sure. I do want to mention I love the way they painted the eyes, they are very detailed despite the tiny space. Pre-paints tend to get tricky on the small details, but the eyes look fantastic.

Speaking of paint application, the overall paint looks great on this piece, especially the armor. The weathering looks very realistic and natural, as opposed to shoddy dry-brushing. The skin tones look fine too, but I feel they sort of screwed the pooch on the spots. Rather than applying the spot patterns properly (the dark skin areas should have more spot density and it gets less and less as the skin lightens), they simply covered the legs in spots all over the place and overdid it on the face. He kind of looks like he has a bunch of big honkin’ beauty spots. Buuuut we have to bear in mind this is a pre-paint, so from that standpoint, it’s really not all that bad. Especially considering the price.

Overall, my feeling on this piece is that for $150, you just can’t beat this… Sure you can get a sweet model kit pro painted that will blow this out of the water, but it will also cost you 5 times the price for the same scale. The price point is excellent, the sculpt generally rocks and the paint looks great unless you’re looking for things to comment on. This is a GREAT buy and I would highly recommend anyone that can get this on the secondary market for under $250 to grab it ASAP! As of now however, both the exclusive and regular versions are sold out at Sideshow. Told you guys to grab it quick

I also had a chance to snap a bunch of pics and had some fun with jungle style backdrops… click the icon below to see all the new photos:

I also had a chance to record a little video review for you guys. I’m getting a lot of good feedback on the little videos so it looks like despite being unprofessional and usually all distorted you guys dig my little clips! Hey, who am I to complain? So here’s a new one showing off the dio and it’s extra shakey this time as I didn’t use a tripod… not out of laziness, I just needed to move the camera around a lot. I think I need a camera or something. Anyhow, you can check out the video below:

So that’s it guys! Thanks a bunch for reading my review and I hope you enjoyed it. Please be sure to post your comments by clicking the comment button below.

Take care!
Dan

The Predator 1 Maquette is now available for Pre-Order DIRECT from Cinemaquette! Order it at www.cinemaquette.com today!

Enjoy!
Dan

Hey guys! Sorry for the lack of updates, been a little bombed with other work but I still have lots of reviews and new photos to share. I wanted to start off the week by showing you guys a new series of figures from a Japanese company called FuRyu!

These are plastic vinyl, non-poseable figures that all measure approximately 10″ in height, and the series includes a regular and “stealth” edition of Scar from AvP, an AvP style Alien, AvPR style alien and the AvPR Predalien. There doesn’t seen to be a US distributor for these, so most people are grabbing them from Yahoo Japan or from Hobbylink Japan.

The AvP Alien and Predator figures have just been released and the AVPR Predalien is due in November, followed by the AVPR alien in December. Price is around $20 each.

You can find photos of these guys in the FuRyu gallery on our site by clicking the photo icon below:

I think it’s safe to say a Wolf Predator will be along as well, but nothing so far. I personally don’t have any of these on the way for review, but Chris and a few guys at the Hive have picked some up and seem to love them. Check out the full thread about these over at The Hive forum.

Enjoy guys!
Dan