Hey there!
It’s been a while since I’ve written up one of these, hopefully I’ve still got it in me~.

Anyways, I recently received the new soft mold so i figured it would be a good time to write up a review on the pieces.

First off, here’s an overview of all the new pieces in all of the colors:
There are seven new items (Top to bottom: One sided Pauldron, Shawl, Cape, Waist Cape, Two sided Pauldron, Loin cloth, and hood) in four different colors (Left to right: Reddish Brown, Black, White, and Dark Red). Now before we discuss anything, let’s go ahead and get price out of the way. Each of these pieces ranges from $1.00 USD to $2.00 USD. Here’s a quick list of prices:

• Loin Cloth                 : $1.00
• One-Sided Pauldron : $1.50
• Two-Sided Pauldron : $1.50
• Shawl                        : $1.50
• Hood                         : $1.50
• Waist Cape               : $1.50
• Cape                         : $2.00

As I said earlier, these are soft pieces. They are made of soft plastic as opposed to rubber so the finish is much shinier than the soft pieces that Lego produces.

Comparison of Lego’s soft pieces and arealight’s soft pieces

The pieces are also quite durable and flexible. The flexibility is great since it will allow you to use the pieces and not have to worry too much about them getting in the way or impeding movement.

 Stress test

So what about the colors? I personally feel the current palette of colors is a pretty good starting point. Hopefully there will be more variety in the future though. Over all they are pretty good matches.

The Dark Red is a very close match. It’s just very very slightly darker, but it still works very well.

The reddish brown is basically exactly the same. Although it sometimes seems a bit darker when compared to some pieces. But I believe that’s just my eyes.

The white is very close as well, the only difference is that it seems a bit more vibrant than the Lego white.Black is an exact match to the regular ABS Lego pieces.

Over all, the material is fantastic. It is both flexible and durable, which means you won’t have to worry too much about it breaking. The color matches are almost perfect and beyond that, it is also soft so it cuts easily if you want to modify the pieces (even plain old scissors will cut through the pieces with ease). I, for one, am excited to see the future applications of the material. As for printing onto the pieces, I believe Arealight is currently sorting that out as I write this review.

So then, you’re probably thinking “cool plastic, what about the actual parts?”

Well~ I feel the actual parts are fantastic. We’ll start off with an old favorite: the cape.

For any long time Arealight fans, these capes are about the same design. They are, for all intents and purposes, the same. They are still the same beautifully designed piece with that flowing in the wind look that we all loved.

The cape itself is useable with a variety of hoods and head gears due to its flexibility and snugly fits on the top of the torso due to a small indentation on the underside of the cape.

Next up we have the shawl:

The shawl is another piece based off of cloth. It has the same fabric like design that the cape has and fits with a variety of headgears, just like the cape.

Just like the cape, it fits snugly over the torso.I personally think this piece has tons of potential applications and am really excited to see what the minifigure customization community uses it for. Something to note is that if you want to put a cloth piece underneath it, the cloth piece must be modified slightly.

Staying with our theme of “cloth”, next up we have the loin cloth.

Each loin cloth is double sided so that you can choice which side you want. Since the plastic is soft, if you really want, you can also cut off the side you don’t want. As for the design, Arealight did a fantastic job of showing the folds in the cloth on the more flowing side and the reverse side has a much more official look about it. This is another piece I’m quite fond of for the possible applications. The fact that you can easily overlay it onto cloth pieces easily opens so many options.

If the loin cloth is a little bit too risque for you, Arealight is also releasing a waist cape with this mold:

The waist cape is a personal favorite of mine just because of the sheer number of possibilities and the fact it fits in so many themes. And just like the regular cape, Arealight also gave it that “flowing” look. One of the things I really really love about this piece though is the fact that it is very low profile and adds very little bulk around the waist.

Our next piece is another “cloth” piece.

This hood works quite well with Arealight’s shawl and cape. It is also a bit more tight fitting than most hoods and sits closer to the face, rather than cover it.

The hood also has a small area that goes down below the minifigure’s neckline to give the illusion of it being attached closer to the bones rather than at the neck.

I’m not as big of a fan of the hood as other parts in this mold, but I still really love the cloth folds that Arealight gave it. It is also still a fantastic part.

Finally we have some pieces that aren’t usually considered “cloth”

These two parts are two different versions of the Pauldron. One is two sided and the other is one sided. As for the parts themselves, I feel it is a pretty good representation of the reference material. It may be extremely simplified, but I personally like that about it.

That wraps it up for the pieces. As for my final thoughts on this mold, I personally love it. The material it is molded in is phenomenal, the parts are beautifully designed and as a customizer, I like how easy the pieces are to modify (should you want to) and the fact that they can be used in such a broad range of themes even if you don’t want to modify them.

Happy customizing

-Apples

A bit late, but better late than never.

Finally got a chance to sit down, work with the pieces a bit and actually write something that’s actually relevant about these pieces.

As you can see, I’ve even spent a bit of time decorating the plain white helmets. They’re actually quite fun to paint up if you’re into that. The Merc helmet is by far the easiest to get a nice paint job on due to the high level of detail that is already included on the helmet.

The Merc helmet itself features quite a bit of detail. The antenna is actually molded onto the helmet, which could be seen as a downside; but I just see it as a nice way to make sure that it stays in the right place all the time. The breather part of the face is also detailed quite well and gives a very strong old sci-fi feel and works great for those Old Republic Mercenaries. I personally am quite excited to see how Arealight prints these helmets up. I could definitely see them looking much nicer in other colors than white as well.

And as you would have guessed, it wouldn’t really be too nice to have a Merc helmet without a matching jet pack. The design on this matches perfectly to the source material and will no doubt make a great addition to any figure. It meshes quite well with “older” sci-fi themes outside of just the Old Republic theme. I could even see it very loosely being used in steam punk themes with some modifications. Overall, it’s a great piece. High detail and quite simple to paint or decorate due to all of the details.

Following the Old Republic items, we have the long awaited Combat helmet. This is based off of the trooper helmet from the Old Republic Trailer. I was pretty excited when Arealight began processing this simply because of the fact that Lego released the figure without the helmet; which just seemed so out of place. Beyond just that, the helmet has a great design and really does just look fantastic. The holes on the side of the helmet are specifically designed to tightly grip Arealight’s Phase 1 Sun visors and Phase 1 Macrobinoculars. This means that you can easily raise the macrobinoculars without having to worry about them falling down. I can definitely say I am eager to see how Arealight ends up working the printing on this helmet.

Speaking of Troopers though; that makes a great segway into our next piece. The SpecOps Pack. I personally love the design of this back pack simply since it works so well with most sci-fi themed figures. The back pack allows for enough room to comfortably fit most helmets and is compatible with all Arealight helmets. There really isn’t much else to say about it besides the fact that it is quite an amazing piece. Definitely consider picking these up to go a long with your Commando helmets if you have them!

Up next we have the trooper helmet. This helmet has been long requested by fans due to Arealight’s commander helmet having that hole in the visor. Personally I think this helmet turned out great! I personally feel the shape is much better than Lego’s version and the breathers just give it a much more defined look. The fin is also sized quite well on this helmet compared to how it is sized on others; not too high and not too low. The helmet accepts Lego’s helmet accessories and holds them perfectly with no deformities on the pieces; however Arealight’s Phase 1 Sun Visors and Phase 1 Macrobinoculars are a bit loose. This means that without any adhesive or additive adjustments to the helmet, you won’t be able to mount the macrobinoculars so that they stand straight up on the helmet. I don’t see this as too big of an issue though since being compatible with lego’s accessories makes up for that. One of the things I definitely am excited to see are some special prints coming out for this helmet that make use of it’s closed visor.

The next item on the list is the pilot helmet. I really do like the design on this helmet, Arealight’s attention to detail on this helmet just makes it for me. The bulky design makes it blend in quite well with Lego’s Pilot helmet designs. The one issue I see with this helmet is that it has a bit looser grip than the others; but it still has a decent grip on the head so it isn’t too big of an issue unless you plan on throwing your pilot across the room.

So we had the Trooper helmet with this release, a closed visor version of the Commander Helmet; and Arealight didn’t want to leave the Mando helmet out of the party so he released a closed visor version of the Mando helmet: the Hunter helmet. This helmet is in essence a closed visor version of the Mando helmet with a few adjustments. These adjustments included adding more detail to the back and I believe making the area above where the visor is usually located more defined. The plain face of this helmet makes it great for decaling and I could definitely see some designs that utilize this closed visor being printed onto here in the future. The holes on the side are designed to fit Lego’s helmet accessories, but I believe they will also fit Phase 1 Arealight Accessories. Be warned though! It is very hard to get them attached to the helmet and near impossible to remove them once it’s on! I do not advised if you’re worried about the piece breaking and you don’t have an extra on hand.

Finally, we have the Comm Helmet. This helmet is based off of the Sonic Trooper that showed up ages ago in the Clone Wars Series and is definitely one of those helmet designs that deserves to be available for customizers. Arealight got the design of this helmet dead on and it really does look perfect when compared to the reference material. Again, the blank face plate makes it perfect for decaling, but I could definitely see the raised area on the forehead being a bit of an issue. As I’ve said before though, I definitely am excited to see this in other colors, but in white it still does look amazing

So to sum it up, these pieces are definitely worth checking out; especially if you’re into the decaling or painting scene of customizing. Even if you aren’t, the SpecOps pack and Merc Pack will go a long with almost any sci-fi figure with or without a paint job. Beyond that, the combat helmet also could work fine without any sort of decoration if you were to use the macrobinoculars; although it would be a bit plain… Don’t fret though, as these helmets will be printed onto in the future for those of you that don’t like picking up the paint brush or cutting out decals!

Hey Everyone,

I know it’s a bit late, but I’ve been busy lately.

As Promised though: We’ll be starting off this review with the Mando helmets.

So every want to design your own little bounty hunter or Mandolorian warrior? Well here’s your chance!

I personally love the Mando helmets for that reason. There is just so much potential for your own personal figure with these designs.

First we’ve got the Goran Helmet. This helmet sports a beautiful silver and pearl dark grey print (I believe other vendors refer to this color as Steel or Gunmetal) on top of a black mando helmet. The silver is very vibrant and stands out quite a bit on the black, which is personally why I love how it looks.  The printing is very clean and it completely wraps around the helmet. And here are some variants of the helmet

As you can see the design looks quite nice on variant prints that you might receive with your slightly larger orders.

Next up we have the Barin Helmet. The Barin helmet sports some what of a “brass” color printed onto dark bluish grey. Personally this is one of my least favorite prints since the color isn’t as bold. However it still looks nice. If you like the color scheme or the character it’s based on, it would be nice to pick up. As I said though, the color on this helmet isn’t as vibrant as others though.

And here is a photo of the variants. I personally prefer this design printed onto black than the original color. The black just makes the color stick out so much more. Unfortunately that is the freebie variant that you can’t pick out.

Here we have the Galen helmet. Personally I love this one. I’ve always liked the color blue and the silver with dark blue highlights printed onto the blue helmet just looks amazing. This is one I could definitely recommend picking up especially if you were wanting a blue mando helmet for your collection or if you’re a fan of the character. The printing is quite crisp and clean; not to mention it compliments the color of the helmet quite well.

Again, here are more variants of the Galen helmet. Personally I feel the best variants are the silver and white.

Next up we have the Fenri helmet. Personally this is another favorite of mine. The dark red on white is very nice. I also like the extra detail above the T-Visor. The printing is relatively clean, the actual version of my helmet is a bit less crisp than the variants, but it is something I don’t mind overlooking for this helmet since the design and color scheme is so nice.

And more variants for you guys~. The variants for this one are quite nice as well.

Finally we’ve got the Jaster helmet. This one is definitely a great one to pick up as well. The helmet has such vibrant colors that it really makes it worth it. The dark red T visor outline looks quite nice on the dark bluish grey helmet. The silver and black detailing on the sides and cheeks of the helmet also fit quite nicely with the color scheme. The printing on this one is very crisp and very clean as well. I could easily recommend this helmet to anyone looking for a Mando helmet, especially so if you like the color scheme.

Unfortunately I do not have a photo of variants of this helmet to show. So here are some of the other variants you can get of the Jango and Boba Helmets.

To finish off our little Mando splurge, we have a brand new torso print! The Dark Gray Torso Battle Suit; a bit of a mouthful, but a great piece none the less. It is printed on the front…

…and the back!This is actually a first for Arealight to do. And it is definitely very welcome. It’s fantastic to see the curved torsos getting some more love and I could definitely recommend picking these up. The design consists of a redesigned Mandolorian battle armor based off a specific character. And it matches quite well. The printing is not only very crisp on this, but it’s also very detailed. Arealight included the folds and wrinkles in the fabric of the cloth that you’d expect from someone wearing this type of armor. Outside of that the detail on the belt is just plain amazing; the pockets are shaded where you’d expect them to be and he was really able to create a sense of depth with the design. Honestly the only real “flaw” I can think of is that this torso was specifically designed to be printed onto dark gray; this means that the variants won’t look as nice because part of the design is left blank because of that. However, that shouldn’t deter you from buying the actual torso; as it really does look amazing.

Anyways I hope this review helps anyone who actually hasn’t had a chance to get the new prints yet. Next review will cover wave 7 helmets.

Until next time~

-Apples