Facepool WWII Soviet Tank Crew - Mariya Vasilyevna Oktyabrskaya (Aleksandra Samusenko)

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Review by metalfrog:

https://bbs.bbicn.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=385891&extra=page=1
Facebook's first historical theme, and also the first female soldier puppet, was delayed for half a year and finally got it.

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This time, the style of the packaging box has changed greatly, and a certain design sense of the seal is adopted. The packaging of the puppet and the platform is a unified style and color matching, which has a bright feeling. The doll box has illustrations and instructions. It is recommended to read the instructions carefully first, otherwise it is easy to damage the accessories like the owner.

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Look at the head carving first. The facial expression of the female head is always in place, and the smile is sweet and natural. Personally, I think this smiling head is more pleasing. Standing among the army puppets, there is a cute girl who is smiling at you. It is really eye-catching.

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The uniform is soft and soft, and there is a fattening suit inside. Compared with the official picture, it is replaced by the officer's breeches, which is more handsome. Just put on the leather jacket directly, the collar needs to be pinched. The belt and shoulder straps, holster and water bottle were put on according to the instructions, and there wasn't much else to put on. The gloves are directly put on the flat palm according to the instructions, the movement is very limited, and it is not easy to flatten. If you give a few more rubber gloves, the playability will be much richer.
The leather coat is said to be lambskin, which is soft and requires some patience to take care of it.
The figure of this female soldier is not a thin and slender Barbie style. It obviously has the rough feeling of Maomei, which is also a feature of the historical series. The Maomei in the photos are all broad-shouldered and rounded, and the landlord likes this very much. A realistic feeling.

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Let’s look at the key accessories tank helmet first. Different from the previous Soviet tank helmets of Veyron and Boundary, this helmet has exposed communication equipment, earphones and microphones, which are basically restored in place. The care of the helmet also requires a certain amount of work, and it is necessary to avoid the arching too high. Some owners of the webbing choose not to put it in the jacket, which will appear more neat.
Wet hair as instructed for better wear. (Smaller male heads can also be worn)

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Accordion - It has an onyx-like finish on it, and some golden Soviet patterns, but it doesn't pull like a real organ, alright. For the sake of enough details, it should also be good as a scene decoration. The shoulder strap + copper buckle details on the back are a plus.

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TT33 pistol – The details are good, there are lettering, the bolt can be pulled, and the gun rope is added compared to the official picture, but the small buckle that hooks the gun rope is too brittle, and it is accidentally pulled off, so special attention needs to be paid.

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Epaulets - Comes with 2 sets of epaulets of different ranks, Captain and Sergeant Major, with emblems with similar etched details.

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Let's take a look at the accessories of the special edition. The tank console is all metal, heavy in weight, and old. Personally, I like this kind of local platform very much. It does not occupy much space and can also meet some needs of the crew to set the scene. The final highlight is this angry head. It seems that no 1/6 female puppet has ever made a similar expression. Before, she was a cute girl who smiled like a flower, but she became murderous in a blink of an eye. The feeling of fighting a girlfriend with the platform came out immediately.

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You can also take down the cabin alone and let the puppet stand on it. Compared with the previous female military puppets, this combat head sculpture does give people a lot of freshness.

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This figure simply looks amazing. As the reviewer mentioned, the smiling sculpt is my preferred look. She doesn't really fit in my collection but I'm just tempted to get it.
 
This figure simply looks amazing. As the reviewer mentioned, the smiling sculpt is my preferred look. She doesn't really fit in my collection but I'm just tempted to get it.

It worked out well that they put the best sculpt onto the regular figure as I didn't want the cupola.

No indication yet that Giantoy are getting stock soon because they still have the deposit option open.
 
Another review:

https://bbs.bbicn.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=385982&extra=page=1
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It's really embarrassing for Facepool that they went to all the trouble of printing up Mariya Vasilyevna Oktyabrskaya's history, making the base as a tribute to her, and painting the cupola with her tank's 'Fighting Girl' name.

And then went and sculpted Aleksandra Samusenko.

Maybe one day they'll re-use these pieces and release an Aleksandra figure with a Mariya sculpt? :unsure: :lol
 
Just received the invoice for this one.

She seems like she's been a out for ages, but I think Facepool have been throwing chum into the water with their updates, and then sent a couple out for review.
 
I've unboxed her and removed everything, and it's a pretty impressive set. Especially for the price, which worked out at just over £129 including delivery.

The packaging was good too. A sturdy shoe box with a Hot Toys style card overlay on top of two layers of compartmented foam.


One thing I was worried about was the accordion, because Facepool updated their plans for some parts mid-production:

leather clothing, boots, belts, etc. are made of genuine leather, and the accordion bellows is made of soft rubber with a certain degree of flexibility.

Well, luckily they didn't make the bellows of "soft rubber", because as far as I can tell they're immobile hard plastic. That's good news for their longevity.

The accordion was actually the first thing my eyes were drawn to on unboxing. It's such a unique item, well detailed with all the tiny sculpted keys and intricate gold highlighted patterning. Most amazing of all though was how they managed so well to capture the marbled effect of the Bakelite.

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The next thing was the sculpt. Again, it's very well done. The paintwork is better than I expected, and very naturalistic. Not easy to capture when snapping the photos, though.


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The instructions say to dampen the hair to tame it in order to fit the tank helmet. But there's no need. She's already wearing it in the box, and apart from that one stray hair her coiffure is already neatly tamed behind her.

As for the claim about "leather clothing, boots, belts, etc. are made of genuine leather", I'm not sure. It depends on their definition of "genuine". It's probably the bonded kind, which would explain the strong smell of plastic when I first took the jacket out.

However, when you look at the jacket, holster, map case, belt and Sam Browne strap under a magnifying glass, they have the very convincing irregular creases of genuine leather. The gloves are the only parts that have a uniform machine pattern, and are much more obviously pleather.

And the longer the jacket's been out of the box the more it's starting to smell like leather. The initial plasticky smell may have been temporary contamination from the foam packing, which has quite a pungent aroma!

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Now onto assembly.
 
I was starting to put the shoulder boards onto the jacket, which attach at one end with a magnet, and stopped to look back at the photo of Aleksandra Samusenko that I think Facepool used as their starting point for this figure:

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Facepool's shoulder boards have the same configuration of three stars and the tank badge, which is the rank of Starshiy leytenant (Senior Lieutenant).

(Mariya Oktyabrskaya only reached the rank of Senior Sergeant).

However, there's something wrong with the shoulder boards. The stars and tank are gold on a gold background. They should either be silver on a gold background for Armoured Troops:

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Or gold on a silver background for Armoured Troops Engineers

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The stars and tank could be painted silver, but the risk of ruining the epaulettes probably isn't worth it.
 
I finished setting her up.

One persistent nuisance was that one of the stars from one of the shoulder boards kept falling off, so I kept having to glue it back on. Amazingly it didn't get lost. It's so tiny and so fiddly to try and fix in place that I think the minute amount of glue I was using was drying out too soon. It seems to be secure now.

Pushing the pin through the hole in the belt was also very fiddly, as it's hard to judge when the hole is over the pin.

Attaching the lanyard to the TT-33 was quite easy as Facepool left the metal loop open so you can slide it though the ring and pinch it closed afterwards. But then I didn't know where to attach the other end.

I have a 1953 dated Tokarev TT-33 with its holster and lanyard, and the lanyard has always been attached to the cleaning rod that fits into the side of the holster.

This famous wartime image clearly shows it attached to the holster's shoulder strap:

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Samusenko's holster is looped onto her belt, so I attached the lanyard to one of the leather rings. Easier said than done, because the lanyard loop is glued closed! It's weak glue so was easily prised apart. I re-glued it after fitting.


My camera-fu is weak today.

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I was wondering why there was a second set of fabric straps hanging down from the helmet, and realised from the promo photos and one of the reviews, that the second strap is for the throat microphone. I took the helmet off and discovered that the mike had been left at the top end of the strap, so slid it down until it would be in the right place if the straps were fastened.

As I did that the pesky shoulder star moved. I got the glue and was about to try setting it again when it disappeared for good! :gah:

Thankfully Facepool supplied a couple of spares. I just hope that it's actually glued this time. :panic:

When I put the helmet back on I tucked the side flaps with their straps inside the collar of jacket, so now the helmet sits closer to the head and looks better.
 
This is GSoldier's Russian language review.

The auto translate subtitles work pretty well, and he agrees at the beginning that the figure has Samusenko's face, and later on notes that the shoulder boards are included for a Senior Lieutenant (i.e., Samusenko) and Senior Sergeant (i.e., Samusenko at the Battle of Kursk, since Oktyabrskaya was a Sergeant, but not a Senior Sergeant).

 
For anyone interested, BBTS has the Special Edition for $174 and Standard for $108. I decided I didn't need the cupola or the angry head sculpt, so I went with the Standard.
 
They nailed her smile. Its almost like you wanna hug her. Not for me but beautiful figure.
 
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