IRON STUDIOS: JUSTICE LEAGUE BATMAN EXCLUSIVE - REVIEW
Iron Studios has released a new exclusive limited edition Batman statue under the banner of Justice League. Its a 1/10 scale polystone statue that stands about 30 cm in height. It retails for $100 to $120 (PhP 5,500 to PhP 6,600).
PRICE: 5/5
The promotional photos looked good and upon seeing those photos, it was an instant PO for me. For its price, I thought that it was a good bargain. Hence, I was really excited for this statue. Compared to its contemporaries, Iron Studies made the price friendly to a lot of collectors. Considering that its a polystone statue, the price was really affordable.
PACKAGING: 2/5
Packaging was really bad. Despite this being my very first Iron Studios statue, I've been hearing a lot about collector's satisfaction with the company's execution. However, I find the packaging cheap and is not as prestigious as the thought of owning a statue. I've seen other box designs of other Iron Studios statues, but for Justice League Batman exclusive, it did not live up to my expectations.
The box is a simple black box with a low-end print of Batman as box art design. I say low-end because you could barely see Batman. To make it worse, the titles on the box are hardly readable. Worst, the "exclusive" sticker was also a low-end print. To sum it up, packaging is HORRIBLE! With respect to its packaging, I didn't feel that I bought something exclusive.
SCULPT: 2/5
So how do I put this?
Sculpt was a little better than its packaging. It's not horrible, but I would still consider it in the category of a bad sculpt.
The pose of the statue is good, but it didn't deliver that "ummph" factor. Arguably, the pose is similar to Jim Lee's comicbook cover for Batman #608B but the statue wasn't as appealable as the comicbook cover. I think Iron Studios missed out on that opportunity.
There are certain angles where the anatomy of the statue is bad. Just to point some of it, I thought that the shoulders could have been better, right arm looks longer, left leg doesn't look proportionate to its right, and lastly, I thought the statue failed to copy Batffleck's body mass. Its details like those that makes a statue great, at least by my standards.
Overall sculpt is also a mess. The cape looks flimsy and there are details on the statue that looks like it could easily break. I also didn't like that some parts are flexible. Polystone statues are one of the strongest sculpting materials in the market. Hence, I didn't like how certain parts of the statue, the base to be specific, are flexible. Same can be said with the cape.
PAINT: 3/5
It was okay. There are certain areas that were badly painted thus contributing to its poorly executed details. Moreover, there's this area on the girm reaper shield that irks me.
OVERALL: 3/5
Iron Studios is a "hit or miss" company. I was reluctant on getting their statues because of its off-scale size and their reputation. When I saw the promotional photos for this statue, I automatically POed on the premise that I'll be getting the same statue as that from what I saw in the photos. Sadly, the photos were far from what I got. Probably because of studio lighting? I don't know. But at the end of the day, I wasn't happy with the product.
Its not that its bad or anything, but I felt that I was cheated with how Iron Studios promoted the statue. Its still a good statue for its price. I just thought I was getting more out of it.
Would I recommend it to everyone else? DEFINITELY YES! Its a good table-top statue. And I'll probably keep it to remind me TO SERVE AND TO PROTECT the people--something which is in-line with the profession that I chose (hehe).
Paolo Ollero, 28, working law student, a comicbook enthusiast and a Batman historian, is one of the co-founder of The Dark Knight Philippines -- the premier Batman group in the country. He also contributes reviews and write-ups in Geekend Gladiator and Flipgeeks.
