I love Predator, more than the Alien serires in fact tough for some reason i have very little merchadise about the creature. For years i seen hundreds of Predator figures of all sizes and prices and yet i been happy with only two Hoy Toys figures, that are in fact more than perfect renditions of the monster. And yet....NECA is always there, tempting me until i finally fall into his 125 (and still growing) Predators collection.
I didnt wanted anything fancy or bizarre (like Alien), instead i chose the genesis of Predator, the Jungle Hunter from the very first movie on his "Ultimate" edition because the original is always the best and most well remebered. This guy is on scale with most of the basic action figures and can stand on his ownwith no problem thanks to his flat feet (they kinda looks like shoes) and he is basically a head taller than the human figures.
He is articulated on the head, whoulders, biceps, elbows, wrists, chest, waist, legs, knes and ankles toigh is is not as movable as i was expecting....most of his articulations works great but the head, chest and waist are just cut articulations, they move left and rigth but not up and down, soo he cant tilt his head at all of crouch. I am surprised NECA give him such basic movement for this scale.
Also, it seems the shoulder ball joints have paint on it soo the paint got dry and dont let me move the shoulders at all. I can move the arms up and down but i cant open his arms. I try to use some oil to lose them but they are 100% stuck and each time i try to apply forse, i feel like i am going to broke his elbows instead.
But aside of this odd issue, this guy have literally cables conected to his shoulder pad soo that prevent the movement as well. He also have a cable conecting between his wrist band and shoulder pad and each time i move his elbow i must be extremelly carefull not to broke this thin plastic cable. Is odd a character that is almost nude have problems like this because the Hot Toys figures have exactly the same issues...
The articulations are not as good as i was expecting but still is not difficult to give him some pretty natural poses and the sculpt is really fantastic. His body is cast on semi transluscent plastic with a rugged texture that catch the light nicelly and looks weirdlly natural...not human but not remptilian at all. Also the net thingy over his body and all the mechanical parts on his armour have pretty intrincated sculpting.
The paint is really good as well, no issue here since the dark patterns ons his skin is consistent and the silver paint on the arour matches perfectly. Some of the black paint on the net pattern is not on the net actually, but thats pretty difficult to notice.
The clothing on his waist, the metal pads on his legs and shoulder as well as the quills on his head are made with soft plastic. The quills tough are not as soft as the Hot Toys version soo they are kinda stiff. Another soft plastic section are the blades on his wrist. They come out from his device pretty easy and are extra soft tough looks convincing enough. Also his ornaments - the collar made of little bones and the bones and skulls around his torso - are made with soft plastic and looks resistant enough to play with them.
He is loaded with accesoryes. First he have an extra pair of open hands that looks pretty good and are easy to swap....almost, since the wrists blades demands extra carefullnes while changing the hand.He also have an extra mask exactly as the one on his face, soo you can posing him holding it or removing it and also have an extra head with no mask.
The face with no mask is spectacular. Nicelly sculpted but with an amazing paint job, i love his yellow tiny eyes in the black sockets and the pink on the inside of his mouth looks fantastic. I just wish they added an extra piece for an open mouth expression.
He also have a big back pack that fits on his back nicelly with the help of two pegs. Its easy to install and uninstall tough it restrict his head movement, the sculpt is really complex and it have a laser gun on top. The laser have an articulated arm as well as a ball jointed head to point to any direction.
There is also an effect piece for the laser, a blue and white transluscent thingy that goes on the mouth of the laser but sadly, the articulated arm on the weapon make it fall over and over again thanks to the extra weigth of the effect. Now i wonder why they added an articulated arm to the laser? Is of no use and only prevents a good display of the shooting effect. I ended kind of fixing it by adding a little piece of wood on the articulation of the laser soo it stay stuck but i am really tempted to use glue as well.
Lastly, he have a couple of skulls, one with a spinal cord and one without it. But looks creppy to looks realistic and crude at this scale tougth they are clean of any blood and gore unlike the Hot Toys version. Predator can hold the basic skull on his hands pretty easy, but make him hold the spinal cord one is really difficult since his hands are made of hard plastic and i struggled to not brike his fingers or the spinal cord.
Overall, i have some issues here and there, like the stuck articulations, the difficult to put some accesoryes and the lousy laser but is unffair to compare this with Hot Toys and given how cheap was this guy, i think he is really good and looks really fantastic on the shelf. I am not very excited to keep buying Predators tough, i think this represent the character pretty good as it is tough i am tempted to buy the Xeno from the first Alien movie.
