SH MONSTERARTS KING GHIDORAH (1972) | Figure Review

Link the figure stand in this picture if you're interested.

One figure collecting tip I've picked up is sometimes you have to let go of some of them in order to obtain more. I recently downsized a good portion of my collection, and got a pretty large chunk of scratch for them. 
I probably wouldn't have been able to bring myself to purchase this anyway. 
But, if I may be fair for a bit...

Oh look, we have another SH MonsterArts King Ghidorah figure. So what's wrong with this one? Fragile wings? Numerous loose joints? Not screen accurate enough? 
For starters, the tails will need to be attached to the figure out of the box and they attach easily enough. 
Once that's over with, I think this figure looks great. The sculpt looks really good and generally matches his film appearance pretty closely, at least not including stock footage during and before 'Destroy All Monsters.'

The head sculpts are well done, even down to the flat lower jaws. I really like how the hair looks too, maybe could've used a little more brown shading, but it looks fine enough. We need more modern Ghidorah designs with hair.

The rest of Ghidorah's body is sculpted nicely, with scales a plenty covering his body with a bright shade of gold. The scales on the sides of the torso can feel a bit rough, so take extra care when handling them. 

The wings are nice and big and I always appreciate sculpted folds all throughout the flaps. The tails are a pretty good length and feature nicely sculpted...plumage? I never knew exactly what to call those things on the tips of the tails. The point is they look good.

Where I'm generally conflicted is with the legs. They don't look bad, it's just that sometimes they look too long and lankier than I remember them actually being. It's really a matter of how you pose them and it doesn't break the figure for me.
Of course I care about film accuracy, but I'll take close enough. 

Speaking of pose, will it be a neck or a tail that snaps off?
The answer is surprisingly neither! At least on mine.

From head to body, the necks can move pretty fluidly, hold their poses and at least with my copy, no joint has snap off.
The mouths look like they should open wider, but you won't get any wider than what I'm showing, do not try to force them anymore and completely ignore the tongues!

The body can rotate at the waist, bend pretty far forward and you do get a slight side-to-side tilt.

The wings.
Oh, here we go...the wings.

They're good.
The joints on them feel pretty strong and make me confident when I flap them and move them up and down.
There's also these pieces that you can position in place to hide the joints. Really the only problem area, at least on my figure, is the left wing. It doesn't stay up for too long though because of the weight and the extra piece is kinda stuck in the upper part. But I can confidently say that these are the best SH MonsterArts King Ghidorah wings I have ever handled without worrying about breaking them. 

Legs move forward/backward and in/out at the waist, bend at the knee, there's a bend at the calf for some reason (?) and finally the feet can bend up/down, rotate and pivot.

For me, it's usually been an exercise in anxiety when handling SHMA King Ghidorah figures, whether it was loose joints or questionable engineering. I always make sure to handle my figures with the utmost care and I have to say, I've had more fun handling this Ghidorah figure than any other Ghidorah figure I've ever owned. Even when I ran into a minor imperfection like at some point the spikes on the wing began to touch the surface of where I had it, a small adjustment was all it took to fix that.

This Ghidorah looks great, moves good, is very posable and I would probably call it the best out of all the SHMA Ghidorah's.

Now that being said...

Picture taken from The Articulation Series

To put this in perspective, and I will be estimating: 
The first 1991 SHMA King Ghidorah figure cost about $125, and it came with Gravity Beam effect parts and stands to hold them.
Then that got a Special Color Version for $142, that came with the same aforementioned accessories (some were different colors) along with a flight stand and a small vehicle model.
The 2019 figure came out for $180, with stands for displaying the figure, and that later on got a Special Color Version for $230, with the same accessories.
So why does this figure, that is smaller than those previous figures, with no accessories cost THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS?! Because it's a Premium Web Shop exclusive? I still don't see the logic. 
For that price we should have at least gotten some Gravity Beams and a flight stand, hell, go the extra mile and add a Godzilla Tower accessory. You don't even need the excuse of a "Special Color ver." branding to include the Gravity Beams since no significant part of this Ghidorah lights up when firing them.
Honestly, this feels more like a $150 figure, if we want to be generous to Bandai. 

When it comes to figure collecting, I cannot overstate enough how satisfying it feels to complete a cast of characters from a certain movie. The Showa Godzilla films seem to have the worst record for cast completion as of the writing of this review, unless they announce a Landing Stage Hedorah or a 1962 Kong, the count currently stands at 1. 

Even though It's not my favorite Godzilla movie, I cant deny having the whole cast of Godzilla vs. Gigan assembled looks fantastic, but I also cannot deny that it cost a lot to get here, maybe even too much. So I'm truly conflicted here, I love this figure very much and given the circumstances, I can't say if I would've bought this figure otherwise, nor if I would recommended it given that fact. At the end of the day, vote with your wallet, make the decision that works best in your favor, even if it means letting go of a few things for other things like I did.

And don't bother bringing up that bootleg figure from Aliexpress. I have bad experiences with that site and have chosen never to buy from them again. 

Till next time, I have been your host Gryphon 
and thank you for joining me here in my lair. 
So long...

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