Tuesday, September 07, 2010

Shadow Demolitions/Shadow Pack review

It's a good thing I had seen a video review of a previous iteration before this arrived or else I might have been severely disappointed. However I've accepted the nature of collecting these extremely exclusive limited-run unlicensed fan-made add-ons: it is quite an expensive hobby.
Perfect Effect's Shadow Demolitions with Shadow Pack finally arrived. As you can see from the photo, entire set comes in a box not much bigger than a deck of playing cards.
The star of the show is the new "Shadow Pack." It's a brilliantly sculpted piece with lots of sharp details and painted highlights. It comes molded in matt-black but detailed with gun-metal silver, navy blue and pale metallic blue to match the Nemesis Prime product line. The plastic is a solid ABS type and the moving parts are on solid hinges. There are two sets of panels that open: one set to attach to Shadow Commander's back in robot mode and the other to attach to the front of the trailer-mode.
Both modes clip in very securely and mostly do their jobs as mounting points for weapons. Unfortunately, I must point out that while I'm not certain this is due to my Shadow Commander set being a recast knock-off set, I can't believe there is any way that tiny slot-peg would fit tightly enough to hold up the "BFG" weapon on Shadow Commander's back as shown on the back of the box.
Overall, as far as limited-run items go, I think the given ten-dollar price-tag is pretty good.
However, thus far, Shadow Pack has only been offered for about $50... because it comes in a set with a new repaint of Perfect Effect's "Shadow Warrior" figure named "Shadow Demolitions." Shadow Demolitions is the 4th iteration of the PE-01 figure (inspired by the Rumble and Frenzy cassette-bots from Generation 1). In this case, the new guy is has red highlights... And that's about it. He's is pretty much identical to all the other PE-01 figures already out. He still comes with back-mounted "winged cannons" that can be hidden in his arm-mounted quad-cannons. He still transforms into a dual-quad weapon for Shadow Commander. And he still needs this little extra "grip" bit to attach to the mounting peg.
And yes... he still doesn't quite fit on Shadow Commander's shoulder (again, could be because my armour was a KO set). But there's just no way that fiddly peg (which is actually part of the rotating piece that forms the robot's neck) will stay in its proper position while you try forcing the peg into the proper holes... It can be do for the perfectly sized holes in the Shadow Pack. And of course it'll work for the matched hole on the grip bit. But not for any other holes...
As it stands, Shadow Demolitions is still just an expensive version of a Target Master weapon-figure. But now, I'll need to track down a matching Shadow Warrior since I realize my truck mode Nemsis Prime with Shadow Commander trailer simply looks lop-sided without one.