Agreed. It's definitely something that shouldn't be happening at this price point. It's definitely hard to be a fan of Sideshow's products at times. They've been in the game longer than many others yet their final products tend to leave a lot to be desired esepcially in paint, casting and build quality of the bodies. Their figures end up usually needing a good amount of work to bring them up to snuff. And while the argument can usually be made that ppl even mod HT figures, they're usually taking a pretty great looking out of the box figure to the next level to make it even better, where as Sideshow figures tend to need the work just to bring them up to the level they should already be at.
I'm not actively trying to bash sideshow, as I own many of their 1/6 products still to this day, but I'm also not blind to their short comings. I have many of the original GI Joes and most are pretty floppy in the torso and hips while the knees are dang near frozen stiff. Not even the use of silicone shock oil has been able loosen them up.
100% with you on that and I don’t want to bash Sideshow either in fact I wish they would step up. I just hope a lot of these guys that actual make the decisions on the pieces and parts they use knowing full well how the final product is going to turn out lacking either start making better decisions or step down and someone who’s passionate about the hobby steps in.
I honest see a swing in figure collecting in the last several years where collectors are becoming more savvy with what they are going to buy. Especially with so many third party companies coming to the table and delivering figures of outstanding quality and for a fair price. Lim Toys, SooSooToys, VTS, and others to the point it’s making the larger manufacturers look bad. Not arguing the unlicensed verses Licensed properties I’m just saying on the stand point of the quality of a finished piece. After a while of years of this people will turn away. I’ve seen it with the comic book industry where publishers thought the lack of story and art could be saved by hydrofoil, wrap around, die cut, scratch and sniff, poly bagged, multi variant covers. They assumed they could replace readers that left by looking at their collector base as addicts….that the completest in them would want to buy every single cover issue no matter what
they put out. They created false scarcity by short printing certain covers over others. I know of multiple friends who complete got out of collecting because of that. Might not be a true comparison of Apples to Apples but the same thing rings true, if you keep putting out an inferior product be it a $3 comic book or $250 figure…people will walk away. At that point it’s next to impossible to bring them back.
Again this is just my opinion which means absolutely nothing. I’m a 52 year old collector, I collected comics from the time I was 12/13 (early 80s) well into my early 30s when the gimmicks started and it became style over substance.
