Review Details

Varia Suit Exclusive

Product Review (submitted on May 6, 2019):

First of all let me say yes, it's a good looking statue with an iconic pose and the lighting looks nice. Before receiving it, I thought it would be a 5 star piece for sure. However after having seen 5 samples (including 3 regular editions) and having smashed 2 of them, I do need to point out some quality concerns.

Hope this review is helpful.

The first 2 units I received had stress fractures throughout the paint on the left half of the chest plate. I've spoken to a number of other owners who also have had this issue, sometimes there are similar fractures in the paint on the cannon, although only one of my samples had this too.

CS had me smash the first 2 samples in order to get replacements. This allowed me to get a look at the inside of the EX and see what the wiring was like. All the internal LED strips are actually white, with some of them being simply covered with green or yellow masking tape to achieve the desired colour, not a big deal as it does give off the effect required but just not what I expected when there are green and yellow LED strips available, likely a cost-saving measure. I was a bit disappointed to see that the wires were all twist and tape jobs rather than solder.. They weren't even wrapped in electrical tape, they were wrapped in the same yellow (paper-like) masking tape that was used on the LEDs. Probably another cost (and time) saving measure I guess..

As for the materials used, the main body, arms and legs are resin, but the head, shoulders and cannon are all plastic. The inside of the head and shoulders is completely hollow. The shoulders and head are quite thin plastic as well. The chestplate is made of some kind of hard rubber, or maybe soft rubbery plastic. I believe this is where the paint cracking issues ultimately stem from.

Back to the more important outside of the statue and it's paintwork, one of the samples I received (the last replacement EX) has some black goopy stuff (probably adhesive used on the head) on the chestplate armour next to the helmet. It is fully solidified on there and won't come off. It's not a deal breaker on it's own but it is a bit of an eyesore.. On all 5 of the samples I've had, there are what appear to be rough sandpaper marks underneath the paint, often on the shoulder armour and on the legs. It looks like it was some sanding work that was done before painting, but whoever was doing it didn't work their way up to finer grits (such as 2000 grit) and looks like they stopped at around 800 grit and then moved onto painting.. Because the paint is metallic, the light reflects off the scuffs and makes them visible when looking closely. On all of my samples there were various other paint defects as well but again not exactly deal breakers. Just not ideal.

The base is a very good design with the Metroid logo, but 2 of mine came with pretty poor paintwork on the big silver "S" in the middle, there is a white scuffy looking haze all over it, almost looks like paint fade, hard to describe but definitely hurts the aesthetics when you look closely.

To summarise, as you can probably tell I had to go through a few replacements to get samples that were worth keeping. Even then, I had to settle for samples with some issues because everything other than the paint cracks on the chestplate were deemed acceptable variances. It's a good looking statue even with all the smaller issues, but it's definitely not what I would class as a "Master Art" like this page claims. It's good looking but the quality is overall average.