King Ghidorah 2019 is a rather different sort of figure and its design is rather “different” for the line. How different is it? Read below!
Details
The 2019 version of King Ghidorah looked great in the film but the design doesn’t seem to translate into that great of a figure when it comes to the mechanics-although this figure looks great with its level of detail in the sculpt (do watch out for sharp edges!). King Ghidorah’s wings come in the form of two massive, very sharp and highly susceptible to breakage pieces that have to be inserted onto pegs on the main body and outside of a few small adjustments you can make to get a couple of small poses out of, they’re going to just sit there. In the final form however, it does look imposing. To attach the wings, you put the pegs on the body into the slot on the wing. Next to the slot/peg is a slot to push the wing into. On all King Ghidorah figures that I’d seen, there’s a gap on the left wing when it’s attached which is pretty annoying. I have heard that all you have to do is take a little bit of masking tape and wrap it around the peg but I haven’t tried it myself to see how well it works.
Articulation
The main body has some nice articulation in the feet where they can bend slightly at the foot and kneecap to help the figure stabilize to hold up those huge wings. The legs can move side to side and back and forth a tiny bit. The necks have a nice bit of articulation and are very poseable while the jaws can move up and down and the heads can move up, down, and side to side. Although, the left head did pop off a couple of times when I tried to pose it. The tails have a great range of articulation and can move up down, side to side and can actually hold their pose. It would have been nice if the wings were poseable but any time you add articulation to a figure, the price goes up a little.
Accessories
I don’t know if I would call the included stands accessories but I’m going to include them in this section anyway. Two to the stands fit on each side of the wings while the middle stand provides a center balance for King Ghidorah. There are 2 different sets of rods which depends on which size you choose and what position on the wings you place them in, you can have the wings higher or lower. While that’s cool, they seem to be required if you want the figure to stand up on its own. With how brittle the wings are, I’d say the stands are a necessity.
Paint
There’s not much paint on King Ghidorah. The figure’s mold is a dull gold color and bits of black paint were added on the body and on the wings to accentuate the detail on the sculpt. The eyes are painted and while they’ve got some lazy eye going on with a couple of the heads, you really have to get right up in the figure to even notice. The mouths and teeth are painted as well and they have an interesting pink base with sort of a white wash paint job. It’s not the most consistent job because the right head has less of a white wash in the mouth than the left. In the end though, I didn’t find the paint applications distracting.
Overall
King Ghidorah is an interesting figure in that it fits in the S.H. Monsterarts line because of the articulation and it also kind of doesn’t because of the giant wing pieces that don’t move which kind of makes it like a statue-it’s a weird anomaly. The figure does look very nice when posed and it’s too bad that the wings are such an issue-but you just KNOW that a repaint version will show up down the line and the wing issue will hopefully be fixed by then. In the end, it’s a great figure to add to the collection if you’re a collector and newcomer alike.
***Special note***
When posing the figure I mistakenly had the tails posed upside down.
**Below are several bonus images, including some close ups of the body and heads.**
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Addendum: King Ghidorah 2019 Special Color Version
After the not so favorable response to the previous version of King Ghidorah 2019, this new special color release has arrived, almost as if to erase the previous release. Although not much has changed, this release is the one to get!
Details
For the design, this is the same mold as the previous release. Again, it’s a do-over.
Articulation
The joints seem to be tighter in some areas this time around. For example, I can make him stand without the use of the middle stand, but with the wing stands alone, it made him droop forward a little. No matter what I did to adjust the wing stands, that was the outcome. When I put the center stand back on, I had some stability and I was able to get the wings to fold straight up - initially they were a little lopsided due to the left wing dropping a little but with some adjustments.
Accessories
With this being just a repaint, I was hoping for some beam effects to be included but, nope, no such luck.
Paint
Now for what you’re here for! The paint! There’s a nice mix of silver and gold on King Ghidorah this time around and it really fits the figure… well, mostly. First, the bright spots. King Ghidorah’s body is now a bright gold color and mixed in, in parts are sections of silver which looks great. The silver on the necks really add some definition and what’s interesting is the silver is also added to the, I guess I’ll say “side horns” on either side of the face. It’s an interesting choice to put the paint there, but I like it. The silver is also on the feet/toenail section as well, which looks pretty cool. Finally, the silver paint is also applied to the back of the necks and the spikes on the ends of the wings. I really like how all this looks and it makes me wonder why more effort wasn’t applied to the first release.
Now for the one part I didn’t like. For some reason, a bit of rose colored paint is applied to the eyes. I get that they want to make the eyes stand out a little bit, but the paint color is an odd choice. It looks like King Ghidorah got sprayed with mace which messed up his eyes. All in all, King Ghidorah looks way better here than he did in the previous release.
Overall
Special Color King Ghidorah 2019 is a welcome addition to the line and while many feel that the previous should have looked like this, I’m glad that Tamashii took notice and created this version.
**Below are a number of bonus images for the figure.**
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