u/Beautiful-Ad9276

My Artisan Moon Knight finally arrived today, and it's a great figure. I will admit, though, that it's an underwhelming unboxing- for the price you pay, they could at least throw in a diorama base.

This was also the first time I had real concern about the hair. I own four Artisan releases- five, if you count Bettlejuice, and six if you throw in my InArt Paul Atreides. And I have been fortunate to not have had any problems with any of them. But St. Louis, like most of the world, is in the middle of a heat wave, and this figure sat on my front porch for at least an hour in near 100 degree heat. When I opened the package, EVERYTHING was warm and moist. The instructions felt slightly damp. And when I tried to remove the back panel to move the eyes, I accidently ended up pulling out a few strands. Nothing major, but enough for me to put him aside for a few hours to cool down.

For releases like this, I kind of wish they did with him what they did with Jinx- have the face be removeable so you can easily access the eyes. I don't like having to remove a hair panel in the back to move the eyes, then having to maneuver the rest of the hair out of the way so you can put the panel back.

Overall, though, I'm happy with him. I also love that I can use that head container to display the masked head sculpt.

Got three new figures last week. The first two I'm really happy with- Vi and Jinx. Still need to dial in a good pose for Jinx, and I wish we got a second head or faceplate for Vi with a more dynamic expression, but overall I loved them both.

And then... there is Saruman.

This is a figure I was really looking forward to, and boy did it disappoint. The head sculpt feels like a massive downgrade from the prototype. The hair is styled with what appears to be and entire can of Aquanet. His staff is very plasticy- it looks fine from a distance, but up close the quality just isn't there.

The Palantir looks like a black marble. It has the EYE inside of it, and it rattles around if you shake it. I'm not sure how it looks lit up, as I haven't gotten the light on the plinth working yet.

And then there is the base. The plinth for the Palantir and the railing attach magnetically, and the magnets are strong, so they stay in place. The plinth has a light in it to light up the Palantir (more on that later). But what they did was create a base that had holes for the magnets, and instead of covering them with plastic and painting it, the entire top of the base is covered in a large vinyl sticker. And not even covered well- it's peeling up in several places. On top of that, the instruction manual says the plinth is rechargeable and needs to be plugged in with a USB-C cable. Well, not only is the USB-C cable not included, apparently the charging system wasn't included either, as there is a button-cell battery box in it instead (and batteries weren't included). I've actually messaged Asmus to find out exactly what is going on with this, and now I'm waiting to hear back.

The tailoring of the outfit is really good. That's about all the good things I can say about it. Overall, this feels like one of those really cheap knock-offs you can find on eBay more than an official release from a reputable company. Especially when you compare him to their Gandalf figures. I'd honestly recommend anyone on the fence stay away from this figure, or wait and try to find him discounted somewhere.

I haven't been completely happy with the layout of my collection, so when Beetlejuice finally arrived, I decided to do some reorganization. My first set of shelved became almost all about Batman- aside from a few pieces in my Brottar, all of the Bat figures I own are now in one section. The top shelf in the second set became a bit of a hodge-podge, but I was able to get all of my Supers and all of the Deadpool figures together, along with the King on his throne. One down I was finally able to get my last Iron Man figure grouped with the rest, and one down for that, mist if the rest of my DC characters. And in the bottom corner, I got many of my Marvel character all grouped together.

In the Brottar I got all of my Loki's and all of my Natasha's together, and the second shelf became the random movie shelf with Beetlejuice, Indy, Jack, Robocop, Paul, and the Terminators. And on top are my Lord of the Rings figures (I'll fit Saruman up there somehow). All told, I like this a lot more, and it has a more logical flow to it for me.