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

In today’s review, I’m going to give you a closer look at a fairly new kit sculpted by Narin and produced by Monsterz.net called the Rogue Hunter! It’s a gorgeous dynamic kit with a huge amount of detail and quite big. Check it out!

This just another example of how insanely cool Narin’s sculpts are, and for so many reasons. Not only are his kits so original in concept, but the level of detail he squeezes in to every minute part of each kit is nothing short of unbelievable. Absolutely everything on this kit has been textured and detailed with maximum Narin goodness! Cast in solid resin, this badboy weighs in at 5lbs and measures just over 15 inches and requires about 12″ of display depth! The kit includes the dragon-like skull base and his massive battle-axe.

As usual, the sample piece was painted by my good friend mister Joe Dunaway from ModelZone.com and he drilled this kit out of the park with this build-up! Bear in mind the leather straps and knife on this buildup are custom bits that Joe added and are not included with the kit. You know Joe, he’s always got to pimp out the kits he builds! Check out the detailing on the axe:

Personally, I love the armor on this one, it’s extremely complex and well detailed, it reminds me of the Death Warrior armor style. The armor has many layers and textures, so you can really go nuts with the paint like Joe did and create some amazing effects. I also love the pose on this one, it’s pretty daring because sometimes trying to go super dynamic on a pose can backfire but this just looks awesome. It was a lot of fun to photograph because it looks cool from so many angles and there’s tons of awesome detailed areas you can shoot close-ups.

As usual, this is another amazing Narin kit and should be part of anyone’s Narin collection! It’s hard to go wrong with Narin. Joe also reported fantastic clean castings that assembled very easily and required very little prep work. If you would like to pick up this kit, you can order in our shop by clicking here or you can click the photo icon below to see all the photos (The photos with the white background are mine):

Thanks for the amazing paint-up Joe and I hope you guys enjoyed the little review and pics! Coming up next is Nightmare Collectibles’ Bug Killer!

Take care,
Dan

PS. Don’t forget to drop some feedback by clicking the comment icon below.

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

Hey guys! Just wanted to show you a new series of vinyl toys coming from PlasticArts in Japan. They’ve got a Hybrid, Alien and Wolf with a masked head option coming and will retail at around $70.

There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of sales information posted yet, but it should surface one way or another. They measure about 8″ in height and each comes with a small accessory (The Hybrid includes a chestburster, the alien has a facehugger and the Predator comes with the face/helmet option). Thanks to Chris over at the Hive for the heads up on this one! Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be any information on these on the PlasticArts site itself, so hopefully we’ll see some import announcements soon.

I have photos of each piece in the gallery, just click the icon below:

Enjoy!
Dan

I am very excited to release the second version of the Predatorstuff.com website! We’ve introduced some sexy new features and streamlined our shop system and we hope you like it and much as we do!

The biggest improvement on the site is the AWESOME new search! Instead of having 3 different searches like on the old version, you can now search the Shop, Reference Guide, Articles and the Gallery all from the main search at the top. The search results are broken down by area and you can filter the results as required. It’s awesome!

Next up is the shop ticker up top… now you can easily see the latest items in our shop and check out those items in detail bu clicking the icon for the item you want. It’s a breeze to see what’s new!

The shop itself has been completely streamlined and updated for easy navigation. You can now browse photos of each item without having to leave the shop and opening the gallery in a new window and we’ve made the detail views easier to read and follow. There seemed to be some confusion as to when stuff was in stock or when it would be arriving, so we hope this will help make things easier to figure out.

Aside from that, we’ve cosmetically enhanced the site and made room for more content so you can see more information at a glance instead of a huge banner taking up half the screen (yes, we know the old banner was nice, but it was HUGE!).

PLEASE NOTE: The gallery and reference guide are still using the old layout.. we’re working on updating those areas as quickly as possible!

So enjoy the new site and please be sure to click the comment icon below and let us know what you think.

Enjoy!
Dan

We’ve been waiting for months for the HIGHLY anticipated Sideshow Collectibles full-size Wolf Predator bust, a replica of the main Predator character from AvP:Requiem, and at last he has arrived! Today we pop him under the lights and break it down for you.

First off, as you may expect the box is absolutely HUMONGOUS and weighs over 50 pounds. The FedEx guy didn’t look too happy to be hauling that sucker up my steps. The packaging is the usual bit with the plain outer shipping box with a retail box inside. The retail box is also a plain brown box with some Wolf artwork stuck on one side. Inside we get the foam shell, and each side has a little compartment you open to pull out the dreads. You can already see the Wolf’s jaws sticking out! You then remove the top foam cover and you can see the Wolf in all his glory with more dreads on either side of him. I then lifted out the bust and found that the base is actually already glued/attached to the bust itself, it’s not two pieces. The bust is also surprisingly light, kind of making you wonder why the box weighs so much. So I popped that on the floor and started taking out the dreads.

Each dread is packaged in it’s own plastic sleeve and they almost feel gooey! Once out of the sleeve, the flexible dreads are still moist with oils from the casting and painting process and have that sweet “New Toy” smell to them. The dreads are numbered from 1 to 6, with 1 being the small dreads and 6 being the biggest. You can see the number is cast right in to the flat, fat end of the dread. And sticking out of each dread on the same side is the end of a threaded bolt. So all you do is look in each hole on the bust and you’ll find a number on the inside rim. Simply match the numbers on the dreads and push each one in… the threads will stop the dreads from falling out. Some go in very easily, a couple you might have to push a bit to get it in all the way. Once you’re done, your bust is ready to rock!

At this point I picked it up to put it in the photo booth, and THAT’S where you get the surprise… the dreads weigh a ton, and once they are all attached to the bust, the thing goes from 25lbs to 50lbs! Some of the dreads are also somewhat bent, but this will straighten out over time as they hang, or you can use a hair dryer to heat them up a bit and straighten them. Personally I’d rather let gravity do the work, just in case the heat does funny stuff to the dreads. The dreads appear to be some kind of foam cast dreads with some kind of rubber coating. They’re super smooth and oily, but look awesome! The dread rings are cast right in to the dreads, they are not separate pieces.

So, once I have it all assembled and up on the stand with the studio lights on, I can get a good luck at this and it’s VERY impressive in person. The bust is about the same size as the Sideshow Predator 1 bust, but this one taller due to the base. The paint job is OK for a pre-paint but I don’t feel it looks very close to the the prototype photos on Sideshow’s site, which has always impressed me with their big ticket Predator items so far. The P1 bust and the P1 Maquette both have production pieces that look very close to the prototype photos, but the Wolf seems to lack the paint details we see in their promotional photos. The main difference between the prototype photos and the real thing is there is no extra green detailing on the scars on the production piece. I really only have 2 major complaints with the paint job and that’s the scar tissue on the side of the face, and the the mouth.

I just feel that the scarring on the side of the face should be a different color than the rest of the skin and I think more attention to detail would have been good here. The sculpt is dead on gorgeous like the original prop, but the scarring could have used better paint detail. As for the veins in the mouth, it’s as though it was the last thing to do on the bust and they just wanted to get it over it. The P1 bust from Sideshow has awesome veins on the mouth, with layered effects. On the Wolf, they basically painted the entire mouth, then just with with a pinkish grey paint and just made lightning bolt patterns with a fine brush and that was it. It looks very sloppy and not realistic at all. They should have used purples and blues, then built up the inner mouth colors, then added a few more veins again for a realistic layered effect. I also think they overdid it with the pink in the mouth… So basically, the veins suck and it’s a tad too pinkish overall. Other than that, it looks pretty damn cool!

The sculpt is gorgeous and straight from the ADI molds… I actually saw the original casting ADI sent to Sideshow, so this sculpt is dead on. I have to admit I would have preferred static resin dreads though in a cool pose rather that these rubber foam ones, but it still looks great! I am SO glad Sideshow fixed the posing of the dreads. The quills look great too, and they are flexible as though made from a similar material as Bake and Blend, which is a type of clay medium used by guys that make mask quills for costumes. The material is very tough and flexible, which helps avoid damage in shipping and handling.

I also noticed a lot of people were concerned about painted eyes vs acrylic eyes… meaning were the eyes painted on the bust, or did they insert fake acrylic eyeballs in to the bust. I’m happy to report they used the superior method, acrylic eyes, and they look awesome!

So overall, I am EXTREMELY happy with this purchase and is definitely a keeper in my collection. I’m not 100% happy with the paint, I felt they did a better job on the Predator 1 bust, but this is still a MUST HAVE for Predator fans. Just make sure you have a sturdy table to put it on!

I took a TON of photos of this badboy, so please check it all out by clicking on the photo icon below:

In addition to the photos, I also did a little mini review and posted it on Youtube. Basically let’s you see how this looks and I share a few thoughts on it. You can watch it below:

So that’s it guys! Would love to hear your comments on this, so please click the comment icon below and tell me what you think of the review and/or this piece! If you would like to purchase this bust, they are in-stock at Sideshow, so click here to purchase one!

Dan