ZANGIEF - SOTA Toys Street Fighter Revolution Series 1 Figure

Truth be told, my current most anticipated series' of figures are those shown by Storm Collectibles for Mortal Kombat and (especially) Street Fighter V. I'm waiting on the MK stuff until I see how it actually turns out, but I've got pre-orders placed for both color versions of Ryu that are currently posted. Despite never really connecting with the games, there's something about the characters of SF that I really love. I've read much of the Udon series of comics and graphic novels, and I've watched as much as I can find of the animated films, so that's where most of my interest comes from. Unfortunately, I was just a little too late to the SOTA party, so I missed out on most of those figures when they were originally released. As a result, I've a pretty limited selection of them. The ones I do have, I love, and that's another reason I'm so looking forward to the SFV figures from Storm Collectibles.

Today I'm taking a look at the Red Cyclone, from SOTA's Revolution Series 1: Zangief. The Revolution figures were released at the very tail end of the run, and are known for 1) a slightly larger scale, 2) collector friendly packaging, and 3) very poor quality control. Zangief is a large character, and the resulting figure is appropriately hulking. He towers over my NECA Ryu, but still looks just about right.

The sculpt is fantastic, if not a little unrefined. As others have noted the hands and faces on some of these Revolution figures look as though they weren't quite finished before production. Creases and wrinkles are a little out of place, or absent altogether. Zangief looks mostly done, though, so I'm generally quite pleased with him. He's got raised scars sculpted all over his torso, he's sprouting giant tufts of thick hair on his chest and shins, and his muscles are bulging everywhere. His face is contorted into a lopsided growl, with his brow furrowed into a crazy, google-eyed scowl.

The detail paint work is good, though the laces on his boots are a little thick. The base color of the entire figure is slightly jaundiced, with some lighter pink shading in places to add depth.

In terms of QC, my Zangief is good (outside of the paint and hand-sculpt issues I've already mentioned). The joints all work as they should, except for the ab crunch, which is very loose and causes the upper torso to flop forward unless he's posed "just so". I won't do anything acrobatic with him, but I am able to achieve poses that I like in good variety. In short, Zangief is an excellent figure from what I might regard as the best action figure line of all-time. His issues are minor, and his positives are plentiful - if only the same were true for E. Honda, R. Mika and Dhalsim, I might consider tracking them down, even at their current astronomical prices...