Fortress of Testicular Fortitude

The final batch of pieces that make up the legs.

Leg parts again.

I would take photos of these items individually if I weren't too engrossed with Gundam at the moment. Photos later on then.


Top row: Smallville Season 8, Hot Toys True Type African American Slim version, Star Wars Freeze Frame C3P0 (Memorial Day present from TED), DC Direct 13 Inch V for Vendetta & Star Wars POTF Darth Vader Tie Fighter.
Bottom row: Liverpool FC, Real Madrid & AC Milan adidas The 12th Man Promotion Exclusive scarves.

Hot Toys is proud to announce the latest collectible from our Marvel series - a vampire hunter who is half-man and half-vampire that becomes the protector of humans against the vampires – the 1/6th scale BLADE collectible figure.



This collectible stands approximately 30cm tall and features more than 32 points of articulation. Dressed in the Daywalker’s movie-accurate costume of an overcoat, black jacket, vest, shirt, pants and boots. And the accessories and weapons include:

- Lifelike head sculpt with Blade’s signature tattoos at back
- Authentic Likeness of Wesley Snipes
- Sunglasses
- Shoulder Holster
- Two (2) foldable glaives
- Two (2) extendable hand armors
- Sword with scabbard
- Interchangeable sword handle with blades
- Five (5) stakes
- Two (2) UV Bombs
- Machine Gun
- Two (2) Handguns
- Four (4) sets of interchangeable gloved hands
- Figure stand with Blade II movie logo and Blade nameplate

Release date: Q1, 2010

As the varying widths and lengths of these flaps would potentially pose a problem during assembly, I decided to spray them on the runner as the unexposed portion is very small and need not be sprayed. I cut away the part of the sprue that connects to the flap portion that would be exposed and filed the excess plastic away before spraying.



I had originally intended to only apply top coat to the piece, but decided to go against it and shell out S$4 for a can of orange paint. It now looks quite a deep orange when compared to the original colour though.

More leg parts.

Parts of the legs.

It has been a long process, but the feet are finally up!



Scraped a bit of paint of the top of the foot but I won't be redoing the piece cos it will be covered up by armour anyway. Still, it's quite depressing to have that happen.



Sprayed part of the soles silver, since it came as a separate part anyway. I will be applying silver to the underside of the flaps on the shoulders and skirt too.







Love the articulation of the feet. The trade off is the effort expended in preparing the number of parts used to assemble it.





Here's the foot disassembled. The cool thing about PG is that all the parts are cast in their respective colours, even the smallest ones, like the red on the toes.



After just under two weeks, I only have a pair of feet and arms to show for my efforts.





The subsequent days will be spent building the rest of the legs. I'd expect it to take about 5 - 6 days.

While I love the visuals used in this promo, I hate the mechanism.



Promo visuals as follows:

















Why the hell run the promotion so late in the season when some fans have rushed to pick up the latest season's kits on the release date itself or shortly after. If you're gonna frickin run the promo, at least standardise the release dates of the participating clubs kits so that no one misses out on the club scarf. Which is what I'm more interested in, rather than the contest.

Please, adidas, if you're gonna run the same thing the next year, start co-ordinating all the kits release dates to the time the promo starts.

Thankfully, I've managed to score Liverpool, Milan and Madrid's scarves from a football speciality store who's selling this so-called exclusive promo item. Pix to come later.

Finally, semblance of a foot and ankle!

To break the monotony of the past few posts, here are the paints that I am using for this gundam.


L - R: Anchor Dark Blue, Black, Dark Grey, Chrome, Red and Kimlac Wood Lacquer Satin.

They cost about S$4 each and contains four times more paint than your typical Tamiya hobby paint.

Yet again more parts for the feet and ankles. Preparing the legs is really a bitch.

I intend to apply decals to PG RX-178 Mark II Titans when I'm done with it, but the kit only comes with dry transfers and stickers.




Dry transfers offer no room for mistakes and stickers don't look that good. After consultation with Leon, he recommended that I give Samuel Decals' water slide decals a go.

Samuel Decals are based in HK and print a very wide range of Gundam decals. Here are the decals that I ordered from them.

Samuel Decal 1/60 PG RX-178 MKII Titans


Samuel Decal 1/144 Psycho Gundam


Samuel Decal 1/60 PG RX-78


Samuel Decal 1/60 PG Zeta Gundam


Thanks to Samuel for being accommodating and allowing me to change the decal set for the Psycho Gundam. He took only two days to process the orders and ship it out from Hong Kong.

Samuel also sent an instruction sheet on how to apply the decals, which will be useful for noob modellers like me.



Definitely top notch service!

As an aside, Samuel's great service surely contrasts to a recent order I made from Amazon on 7 September (It's estimated shipped date of 14 October has passed and Amazon asked me to wait till Nov 11 to report the loss before they consider shipping it again).

The wait for the item is fucking ridiculous cos I have received items within five days from US sellers previously, by paying only US$12 shipping.