I'm baaaaack....
Introduction –
Officially bitten by the Bowen Bug, I return with another mini-bust review. By a remarkable coincidence, the new bust I picked up completely at random was Sabretooth. Which is funny, as he was both a partner and lover to the formally reviewed
Mystique . Both X-men characters, which I won’t be exclusive to in the future, but none the less, coincidences all around. All my reviews by the way will be based on a 5 star system, with 5 stars being perfection, and 1 star being total crap.
Packaging – ***
Same old, same old. I can already tell the packaging will always be my least favorite part of collecting Bowen (maybe that’s a good thing). But, I have to give credit where credit’s due, it gives plenty of info about the character, has the edition number clearly labeled, and all the sculptor info as well. Solid, if not exciting or visually appealing.
Sculpt - ****
I can also already tell that 4 stars out of 5 will usually be the norm with Bowen pieces. As mentioned in the Mystique review, Bowen strives for comic accuracy over reality, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But in most cases, and Victor here’s a good example, a bit more realism could have been used. The main concern for me is his toothy grin, or rather, lack there of. The teeth have this totally smooth Sunday morning comic strip look to them. Which is fine for normal characters, but Sabretooth is another story. His canines are kind of raised above the others, but there’s no true sculpt in them, they’re just little bumps with no defining edge. And when you look right past them, his sideburns have a razor sharp sculpt, so the contrast is even more noticeable. New rule: If your hair looks more fearsome than your teeth, you don’t get to be an animalistic villain any more.
Speaking of his hair, there’s a lot of it due to his costume. While there’s technically nothing wrong with the sculpting of it, it looks sort of…off. Like you very much get the impression the sculptors were trying to get done with the hair a.s.a.p., even if there’s nothing you can put your finger on. The rest of the piece fairs well. The base is perfectly symmetrical, his hands are in scale (although for Sabretooth they actually could have been bigger), and he has all the proper overly muscular parts you expect in a comic villain, including way too many abs. The only major sculpting “failure” here is if you look under his crossed arms, there’s very little definition between his arms and his chest, as if he doesn’t have arms to cross, just one grossly malformed torso.
Paint - ***
Sabretooth’s paint situation is much better than Mystique’s on the whole. There’s still some inconsistency in the darker colors, but nowhere near as problematic as she was. Highlighted areas are the eyes, lips, teeth and hair. The bad areas? Anywhere a light color meets a much darker color, which unfortunately means almost everywhere on him…lol Still, I’ve seen much worse, there’s a little trouble keeping things inside the lines in the harder to paint areas, but something like the skin of the face bleeding on to the brown of the mask is kind of sloppy. The base is done reasonable well, a nice glossy black, but I can see brushstrokes, tsk tsk.
Design - ****
Once again, this category is completely up to personal preference, so I can only speak for myself here. Also once again, not quite the direction I would have gone with a Sabretooth bust. It fits the character though, and looks like the design was chosen to make the piece easier to mold, rather than be too exciting. I do enjoy the base quite a bit though. It’s simple and fitting all at the same time. Also glad they went with his normal costume instead of his intro costume. Also incredibly pleased to see him in scale with Mystique, although her taller base throws it off somewhat. Still, they look pretty good together.
Quality - ***
Weeee a new category! This little guy along with another to be reviewed next week, were bought second hand from a very nice fellow board member. That said, Vic here did not come to me in mint condition. There were several paint rubs (particularly evident in the base spikes), and even a piece if the hair on his back was broken off. Judging by the fact that I had to use some goo-b-gone to remove a sticker mark, I’m guessing this was store bought, and therefore I actually have it third-hand…lol The damage was very subtle, and I didn’t notice the break until I began writing this review, so I’m guessing all damage came from clumsy store hands placing him in and out of displays. But, he really should hold up better under pressure none the less. The first thing I noticed when I got Mystique was how lightweight she was, and that’s always bad news about the strength of the material involved. True, Sabretooth is a great deal heavier than Mystique, but that obviously is because he has more material in him. Maybe it’s just me, being used to the heavyweight polystone from the Lord of the Rings line, but the Bowen selection could definitely benefit from stronger resins.
Value - ****
Gonna take a wild guess here and say he retailed at around $45. That’s a pretty average value nowadays, but again, I think Bowen stuff is pretty overpriced. These are NOT big pieces. If he were more around $40 or $35 he’d be a steal, but since I got mine second hand for around $20, I can’t complain too much…
Overall – ****
Yep, same score as Mystique. Have to give him the benefit of the doubt though. He seems to have a much larger production run than normal pieces at 7000, so obviously the paint suffers for that. But had his teeth been sharper, the paint cleaner, and my personal piece’s imperfections non-existant, he might just have scored perfect. More pics below.
