Tag Archives: Helmet

Wave 6 Product Review

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It’s been a while hasn’t it?
Well, here we go again with another small review of Arealight’s new printed items.  It’s been about a month or so since their release, but since the store was closed a few weeks following, there wasn’t too large of a frame for purchasing them.IMG_1151

Here’s a picture of everything Arealight sent me for this Wave~. The baggie on the left contains lots of the prints on random coloured helmets, the one in the center contains new prints and finally the one on the right contains the helmet mold in new plastic! (We’ll talk about this later~).

So this is for those people who are still debating whether or not to get them or not, I know I definitely get that way sometimes when new product comes out.

For this release we’ve got lots to show! Five new Mando prints, three new commander helmet prints, two new jet packs and reprints of Jesse and Hardcase. Jesse’s design has also been updated to be more accurate.

New product

So from Left to right we have the Force Helmet, Security Helmet, reprinted hardcase, Thorn helmet Jesse Helmet, Dred Jet pack, and Barin Jet pack in the back row. In the front row, from Left to right, we have the Galen helmet, Barin Helmet, Fenri Helmet, Goran helmet, and Jaster Helmet.

Since so many products have been released in this run (a total of 10), I’ll be doing a two part review. For this half, I’ll be reviewing the new commander helmets and the two jet packs and then we’ll take a look at the mando helmets in the next review.

Let’s start with the Force helmet~

IMG_1198The force helmet is based off of an action figure from the extend universe. It’s essentially a regular clone trooper helmet with the Jaig Eyes in black. It’s a very simplistic design, but still is quite nice, I think it would have been a nice touch to have the jaig eyes a different color though (it wouldn’t match the reference however). The helmet itself is completely printed front, back and sides. I could personally see a lot of people using this helmet to modify into a regular clone trooper helmet as well due to it’s simple design. Should you want to do that, it’d just be a bit of brasso each helmet on the front and it’d probably go by pretty quickly. So I would say this would be a pretty nice helmet to add to your collection, and if you want to do some “army building”, it’d be a good way to get regular phase 2 helmets.

IMG_1199And here is a close up of the actual product. The printing is pretty crisp as usual. There was a small blur on my copy on the mouth piece, but I believe I was just a bit unlucky here. The blur itself isn’t really noticeable, and doesn’t show up on any other of the variants of the helmet.

Moving on, we have the Security Trooper helmet.

IMG_1197The security trooper figure, similarly to the force trooper, is based off of an action figure. The design itself is pretty simple, but I still love how this helmet looks despite it’s simplicity. The helmet sports two hatch marks on the side and printing all the way around. Definitely a nice helmet to add to your collection if you like simplicity!

IMG_1196And here is a close up of the helmet. As you can see the print job is pretty crisp and clean as usual.

Next up, we have the Thorn helmet!

IMG_1192The Thorn helmet is based off of Commander Thorn from the Television series. Thorn is pretty popular despite the lack of information on him. The helmet itself sports red printing with a pair of wings on the helmet and printing on the back of the helmet. I would definitely recommend picking this up if you get the chance since it’s just a fantastic design.

IMG_1194And here is a close up of the helmet itself. Unfortunately some of the helmets have a small blur between the wings. However, I personally feel it still looks pretty nice despite this. On the other hand some of them don’t have the blur.  Such as in these off color prints.

IMG_1193All in all, if you get any helmet from this print run, pick up this one. It’s definitely one of the nicest designs.

That does it for all of the new commander helmet releases, so we’ll move onto the jet pack releases~

For the jet pack releases, we have two new jet pack releases. First we’ve got the Dred jet pack:

IMG_1217The Dred jet pack is based off of a Mandalorian bounty hunter’s pack. The jet pack sports red printing on a black jet pack and will come with a silver rocket. The printing is simple, but still looks fantastic. Definitely a nice fit for any figures you want to have a jet pack, even if it’s not a Mandalorian. It’s also great in other colours if you happen to get an off color one.

IMG_1218As usual, here’s a close up of the jet pack. The printing is clean and crisp as usual. Definitely a great addition to your collection.

As for the last piece of this release, we have the Barin jet pack.

IMG_1219The Barin jet pack is also based off of a Mandalorian bounty hunter’s jet pack. It sports black printing on a dark bluish grey jet pack and includes a dark bluish grey rocket. The black printing is a bit unique and different from most printing for jet packs. It has breaks in the designs on the pieces attached to the boosters. It’s a very simple design that fits well with many figures outside of Barin. And as usual, looks great on other colors.

IMG_1220As you can see the printing is very crisp and clean as usual. I would definitely suggest picking up at least this pack or one of the other jet packs before they run out.

 

As a little added bonus,  we have the updated Jesse helmet.

IMG_1215The Jesse helmet now sports a metallic republic symbol instead of the blue one from the original helmet.

IMG_1216I feel like it definitely looks a lot better than the original.

If you get a chance, definitely pick up some of these commander helmets and jet packs.

Anyways, join me next time for the Mandalorian helmets.

 

Print Wave 5

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Ah, mail is always a good way to start off a morning. Especially when it chock full of new goodies. (⌒▽⌒)☆

It’s an envelope inside of an envelope because Arealight had decided to ship it EMS, I received it in about 3 business days.

So then let’s see what we have here!

A bag of freebies and new product! A closer look you say? Alright let’s just get straight to it then. I personally like to put all of my orders into a little bin after dumping them out of the baggie~ It makes it so much easier to keep track of that way while I’m going through new things before I stow them away for future use!

Well… here is the new line up! I left some of the test prints and old product in the bin~. (Please note capes and such are resin cast and will not be re-released for some time unfortunately. (シ_ _)シ Arealight was just nice enough to send me a few old things.)

So here we go! I’m sure all of you are quite curious about the new product that we have. As you can see, we have quite a few new things coming out! Think of this as your little sneak preview. We’re adding quite a few things to the 501st (Blue trooper) line as well as adding a few new things to the shadow trooper line! And the poor lonely Thire will now have a commander Fox to go with him! So how about we put these helmets to “good” use~!

Ah there we go. Much better! I hope you don’t mind the random torsos on some of them! I was just a bit lacking when it came to black clone trooper torsos. ( ≧Д≦) I also had some trouble putting together all of the 501st figures as well. There are so many now after all!

Alright now how about we get this review started! All of these helmets are based off of the clone wars or extended universe. I’ll start us off with something relatively familiar. The good old blue 501st designs. As you can see, we have a 501st ARF trooper(who is based off of Boomer from the Clone Wars Games), Kix (From Season 4 Clone wars Umbara Arc) and a 501st AT-RT trooper (ARC Heavy Gunner).

So I suppose I’ll start from the left front row. The 501st ARF print is actually pretty nice. It’s a Lego blue color, so you’ll have no problem matching it; as with any of Arealight’s other blue clone trooper helmets. The helmet sports a crisp blue printing on the sun visor a long with a line down the center. There is also a bit of blue and black detail print for the face details. All in all, this is definitely a pretty nice helmet. A great helmet to pick up if you want a blue ARF trooper. Or just one of the ARF helmets in general.

Next up is the Kix helmet. I personally have always liked Kix’s design. The Kix helmet sports blue printing around the visor and on the back details of the helmet. It’s printed onto a commander helmet, but since it’s open visor; you end up with a white gap between the head and the blue print. I personally never found this too big of an issue; but if you do there’s always the option to paint the white area black or whatever color the head underneath is. Of course, if you liked the Umbara arc; you’d probably want to pick Kix up to add to your collection.

And then we have the 501st AT RT helmet. Out of all of the helmets Arealight’s printed, I believe this one was the one that’s given him the most trouble. It took several attempts, but Arealight was finally able to produce one he felt he could release. There are a few print issues, like the eyes not being fully covered and the top visor having a bit of white. However, it’s still a pretty decent match to the reference material. In all honesty i think it looks pretty good for the odd shape of the helmet.

More pictures you say? Well. Here are the side and hind shots. As you can see, the back doesn’t wrap all the way around on the ARF helmet unfortunately.

And just for fun… Here is a shot of all of the helmets with blue printing that Arealight has produced!
As you can see, there are quite a few…＼(>o<)ノ I was actually a bit surprised at how many there where..

Anyways, moving on to the three in the back!
Here’s a Shadow Clone Trooper, Commander Fox (Clone wars season 4), and a Shadow Airborne Trooper (Unfortunately I don’t have a picture for this, but it’s essentially a black version of the Utapu Airborn trooper).

So Let’s start off with the shadow clone trooper. The helmet sports a Silver and Gunmetal print. The small details on the side are a gunmetal color while the face details and the markings around the fin are a silver color. While I know I say this about a lot of the helmets, this has to be one of my favorites. It just… works. It’s simple yet effective I guess you could say. I’m just a bit disappointed I wasn’t able to show it off with a matching torso.

Next up is the Fox helmet. I think arealight did a really good job with matching the reference material. He actually decided to hold off on the release of this until he was able to get Dark bluish grey sunvisors made to match the show. (You can see this above.) The main issue again is that Arealight still hasn’t been able to perfect the art of printing white on dark colors. So your helmets may have some “off white” on the white areas. Otherwise the helmet looks great. Something nice for any clone wars fan.

Now for the last of this weeks release. The Shadow Airborne trooper. This helmet sports a silver and gunmetal print. While I don’t like it as much as the Commander helmet version, I still think the silver and gunmetal just works. Those two colors go great on black and honestly this helmet is no exception to that. This printing on this helmet is actually perfectly aligned with the grooves as well. This is definitely something nice for those people who want to build up their own little group of shadow clone troopers.

And now for a few more side and back shots!

 

And just for a bit of fun. Here is a group shot of the 3 Shadow troopers together~

As for an added bonus here’s a little shot of the new version of the Neyo helmet. Honestly Arealight did a fantastic job of revamping it, my only issue is the skewed 91st emblem.

Anyways, Over all this was a fantastic release. I can easily recommend picking up any of the helmets. They’re all really just lovely parts. And honestly, I feel this is probably one of the better releases this year.

Anyways, until next time. I hope you enjoyed this review, I decided to update my review “style” a bit to try and make it a bit more fun.

Happy customizing! (,, ･∀･)ﾉ゛

Mandalorian Printed Helmets Review

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Good day everybody.
As the title states, it’s time for a review of the last of the Printed helmets that had come out with this release.

So here we go:
Left to right: Pre Vizla Helmet(Displayed with Alien Conquest legs and Torso / BrickArms Tactical Sword/ Si-Dan Toys belt / Arealight Jet pack)
Rav Helmet (Painted Arealight Jet pack, Painted Power Miners Legs, Painted BrickForge Vambraces, Printed Arealight Torso with Red battle suit)

Arealight did a great job with getting the detail in on both of these helmets.

Alright, so we’ll go ahead and start off with the Pre Vizla Helmet. First off, the Helmet does seem quite accurate in comparison to the reference picture. The helmet itself is done very well, it has a very crisp printing job and the dark silver is actually printed all the way around the helmet.

The Dark Silver is a close match to both Brickarms’ Gun Metal and Brickforge’s Steel as well as the Platemail print for the new Lego Kingdoms knights. If you’re looking for a paint color to match this helmet, I’d suggest using Citadel’s Bolt Gun metal. The white on this helmet is transparent, but it works fine here since it is just small detailing ont he helmet. The highlights on the helmet seem to be a nice purple color. If you need something to match those highlights to, the Alien Conquest alien color works quite well. Over all, this is a great helmet; definitely worth it if you were looking into getting this helmet.

Moving on to the Rav helmet: This is personally one of my favorites. This helmet matches the reference quite well. The silver on the helmet is just plain beautiful and is printed relatively well. There are a few tiny tiny gaps that aren’t really noticeable unless you look closely between the print surrounding the visor and the sides of the helmet. The black print is very nice as well and goes from front to back.

The red of the helmet is a match to Lego Red, and the silver matches the Lego light silver. If you’re looking for paint to match the silver, Citadel’s Mythril Silver does the job well. The helmet also fits quite well with Arealight’s printed Torso, though I’m pretty sure they’re referenced from the same character. With that said, I can definitely recommend this helmet to anyone looking into getting a Mandalorian helmet for their collection.

Back photo of the helmet. The design goes all the way around.

Now as for the helmet itself, I’d like to make a note that it does in fact hold Arealight’s Phase 1 Visor.

HOWEVER, it is very hard to remove once you get it in; so do this at your own risk. The visor was not made for this helmet, but it does fit it very well and still moves up and down.

Alright so all in all: I would highly suggest you pick these up if you want some printed Mandalorian helmets. I personally like both quite a bit.

I hope you enjoyed these reviews and that they helped you in making your decision to purchase or not.

-Apples

Alright. So With that said, I’d like some input:

Arealight put me in charge of the blog, sort of; so I want to know what you, the reader, would like to see on here. What would make things interesting for you?

Printed Neyo Helmets

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Good day everyone!

I’ll be doing two separate reviews for the “Neyo” and Mandalorian helmets on request.

First off, we’ll be reviewing the Printed “Neyo” helmets.

From Right to left: Neyo Helmet (Displayed with AT-RT Recon Trooper torso) / Clone Assassin Helmet (Displayed with a Clone Trooper Torso and custom printed Legs off of Bricklink)

Alright so, let’s start off with the Neyo Helmet. The 91st Logo is very crisp and printed in a Lego Dark Red ink. The mouth print and line above the visor are printed in black and everything else is the dark blue grey found on the Camo ARF trooper helmet.

The Dark bluish-grey actually works well here since it’s only detail work. I would like to mention that the over all print job on this helmet is extremely crisp and clean.  Personally I prefer this helmet out of the two printed “Neyo” Helmet options.

The second helmet for this review is the Clone Assassin helmet. This helmet totes a dark purple print that doesn’t exactly match lego’s dark purple; but is still quite close. The logo printed on the helmet is the same as the 91st Reconnaissance Corps logo printed on the Neyo Helmet, just in dark purple and on the opposite side of the helmet.  (Refer to above picture)
The Dark purple is used for the vents, dot on the ear pieces and the printing on the back. The mouth and line above the helmet are both black.  As requested on Flickr, I also decided grab a shot of the helmet with the new Azure Blue arms from the Alien Conquest line.
For those looking to make a clone assassin, here is what I would suggest: either paint the top half of those Alien Conquest arms white or go for the BrickForge Vambraces in Medium blue. I wasn’t able to find mine, but the sword from the Blacksmith Attack set from Lego might work nicely as the blades attached to the Trooper’s arms.,

EDIT: I’d like to apologize, I originally had dark blue listed as the color; however it was dark purple. The Dark purple on the clone assassin helmet is a close match the Lego’s purple (not alien conquest purple), it’s just a tad dark.

There isn’t really anything super special to mention about the top of the helmets as there are no details that are suppose to go from front to back on these, but here is a photo for reference.
Over all, I prefer the Neyo helmet over the Clone assassin helmet because it has a bit more color variation to it and the printing is a bit crisper for the Neyo Helmet. Either way you go, you can’t really go wrong.

I hope this helps in your decisions, enjoy.

-Apples

Later today I’ll be posting the Mandalorian Helmet Review.