With all the excitement of Episode VII opening this week, I thought I'd throw in one of the newer TFA Bandai kit sets for discussion.
For those that already own the Imperial Stormtrooper Bandai kit, I can honestly say that this First Order Stormtrooper kit is better built and more thought out. I found it much easier to build. The racks are clearly labelled and they organized the parts for each step to be close to each other, most times right beside each other. So it made the build much faster.
I really like how they handled the armor around the waist and collar. Much better than the Imperial Stormtrooper kit did. A lot of the guts of the figure are built similar as well, like waist, shoulders and knee joints, feet etc...
The figure itself if stunning. It's like this figure was meant to be a model kit just because of the glossy armor. Only when you compare the Hasbro version to this do you realize how dull the finish on the Hasbro figure really is.
The articulation is good but I do wish the knees had a bit more bend like the Hasbro version does. You can only get about 90-100 degrees bend. However, the oppsisite is true for the arms. The Bandai kit has superarticulated elbows. So there is some good with the bad.
The best and worst thing about this set are the accessories. Although the Tonfa stick and gun have amazing detail, there is much painting required to make it look movie accurate cause the entire gun is cast in black! And Bandai failed to provide any stickers/decals for the blaster.
The Tonfa stick does have some colour off the rack, the white prongs but that's about it. There are some decals but I decided to paint instead. I do love that they included a shield and Tonfa
stick and blaster but why is there no hand gun like the Hasbro version? Maybe the movie will reveal that reason.
I quickly found out there are few reference pics at this point of the blaster and Tonfa stick so I have to use the trailer and some youtube cosplay videos to help.
NOTE: The only part I would be cautious when cutting off the racks are the helmet jaw pieces. Two of the cut points are not ideally located and if you look very close at my pics, you will notice a slight gap. That was a lesson learned. The next set I get, I will know to trim more carefully around those parts.
Having said that, you just can't compare the extra detailing on the Bandai kits. Even the shield window is see through. Painting the accessories was a bit of a pain. But I really like how things turned out, especially those three tiny red lines on the blaster. I used a very fine tip paint
brush. I believe it's called a 20/0 tip? Found it in a military model store. And then used a spudger to scrape off the excess.
So all in all, I have to say this figure is great. Sometimes I feel the shoulder armor is a little bulgey but you can adjust them quite easily. It's not easy to find a Hasbro FO Riot Control Stormtrooper so this set gives you that option as well.
Verdict
I'd say this set would be a solid 8 because the painting was a huge pain but they included so many accessories to make up for it. It was a very enjoyable build and the figure itself is very movie accurate from what I can tell from the trailers.
Here are some work in progress pics...
