I don't believe the 'rumor' (it's barely even that) about Premium not paying the factory. That being said, it's absolutely hilarious to me that US-based sales on these might get a bit skunked because people are running to Ali to get them for practically half the price, from sellers that may or may not have gotten them legitimately.
And honestly, if Ali sellers are selling stolen or 'run-off' merchandise that PDNA doesn't benefit from; that legitimately makes me so fucking happy that I cannot even properly express it. Wonderful. Golf clap. No notes. If they're legitimate re-sellers and PDNA is getting their usual profit from those sales, then that is a real bummer because they are fucking scumbag assholes that deserve to be stolen from.
@boy_wonder To be fair, I don't think they're 'evil.' That's a bit grandiose. I know they're liars, though. Liars and probably thieves (in fact, almost certainly thieves). 'Bad' doesn't mean 'evil.' It can just mean those guys are pieces of shit. The scum that grows on the underside of scum. Like Brian Flynn, but with less scruples.
Edit: Fewer scruples? Less scruples? Now that I've said it out loud a few times, I feel like fewer scruples sounds more correct. Is it? Who knows. Does it matter? It doesn't. But I had to think about it and now you do too.
Just got my Aliexpress Jim in, w/headpack.
Seems to be a legit figure, but could be a factory second. Joints are very nice and smooth, especially the legs, which support his big torso just fine. Toe articulation would have been very useful to help balance him in more dynamic poses.
There are a couple tiny little paint blemishes on mine - two tiny blue dabs on his yellow collar, and a blue dot on his right bicep. Also, the right front suspender doesn't fully reach his belt, it's off by a bit, but is kind of annoying, because the other three hit the belt flush. There is a pinhead fleck of white paint on the lip of one of his heads, which kind of pops a bit. And his belt holster broke off right away when I posed his left leg outward. A tiny bit of gorilla glue will fix this, tho, and I'll use a bit of brush cleaner to quickly remove the rest of the paint bloops.
Granted, the Ali Jims I've seen photos/videos of so far haven't had the issues mine have, so I may have just gotten unlucky. Or these are a batch of figures that didn't meet PDNA's QC so they didn't pay the factory for them, and the factory is unloading them to Ali sellers. Either way, for $22, the issues are within threshold, much better production than any Hasbro figure at that price point, and within the normal issues you might have with a NECA figure. However, at $50? Well, you may be a bit pickier and feel this isn't up to snuff for that cost. But still, much better quality than a S7 figure at that price - much better articulation, plastic, and a nice matte coat of paint make this figure look premium.
I got my Jim from AliExpress yesterday, he’s good but… I feel like I’ve got real price blindness on the figure.
There are YouTube toy reviews who get sent review samples from Super7 and because they don’t equate the figure with a day of hard labor it’ll crumble to pieces in their hands and they’ll say “so if you just want to put it on your shelf and never touch it, it’s pretty great, you should get it!”… it’s like that!
I paid $40 for Jim and the Heads pack (although I’m still waiting for the heads pack to arrive) that’s $20 less than Jim retails for alone and $50 less than the set goes for.
For the price of a NECA figure Jim’s pretty great, very impressed he stands and stands well on those tiny little legs, very expressive figure and can pose really nicely… I don’t know if he’s $60 good. He is better than a Super7 figure, so if you’ve convinced yourself those are worth $60 and you’re not being ripped off, Jim is going to blow you away with how good he is, you’ll point to him and say “I hope the 2k3 Turts are THIS GOOD!” But if you don’t like Super7 figures Jim is kind of a harder sale, he’s kind of a mix of a good Hasbro figure and a good NECA figure with the negatives of each.
I think if I had spent $60 on Jim I’d be okay with him, I don’t think I’d be okay with having spent $90 to get the extra heads too (the three he comes with are pretty good, I don’t think I’ll ever used the charred one, though he worm body will be fun to have)
So TL;DR: Jim is a great figure at Ali pricing, a fine figure at retail, and kind of a rip off at $90
Fake edit: I’ve tried to write this four times but the ads keep refreshing forcing whole page to reload, between that and the prove your a human math problem (because what do robots hate: basic math!) now saying correct answers are wrong half the time I’m not having great hope this place stays up during Comic Con…
@doc-baghead got to get an ad blocker on your browser. uBlock Origin for me and I have yet to see an ad here.
I switched to using Firefox on my phone so that I could have an ad blocker for this site. It was almost unusable without it, which is unfortunately true about a lot of sites these days...
Mine arrived today as well. Jim, Psycrow, and a head pack. Pretty dang happy with them overall. A few very minor paint misses on Jim, but Psycrow is perfect paint wise , and Jim has enough alt heads to use since his default head has a tiny bit of paint slop on his mouth. The biggest gripe is Snot has a pretty big black paint miss on his eye. Shouldn’t be too awful to touch up.
All their joints feel great though. The swappable parts all go in and out smoothly. I wish Psycrow’s naked arms for as much range as his suited ones. I think the naked arms are visually much more interesting to look at. But overall satisfied considering the price.
@justice gonna have to look into that, ads used to not bother me (muted phone, scroll past’em) but the fact they keep crashing and reloading the page (did it twice while I write this!) makes this forum unusable!
Unrelated to the ads crashing forums, my order for the head pack was canceled and I was given a refund today. That’s cool, I think I only bought the head pack out of FOMO (why would I want seven less accessories?!?!) since my face blindness can’t identify what half those expressions are… But I guess if I had to get one item and have another cancelled, getting the base figure and no head pack is the way to go! So I still see this as an absolute win!
Got my Earthworm Jim today. Paid a whopping $9 delivered for him and wasn't expecting a whole lot, but damn, my figure is damn near perfect. Paint looks good on everything and the joints feel good. I did end up with 2 left fists, but he'll be holding his gun, so no worries there. They did ship him in a mailer, but I've never cared about the trash around my fig as a certain fella likes to say. Think I'm looking for more deals on the other figures.
The BBTS underwear Jim is showing up on Ali Express now.
Gives me hope that maybe Professor Monkey For A Head will pop up. He’s been conspicuously absent so far. Some sellers say they have him, but there’s no in-hand pics like everyone else and they’re exorbitantly expensive, so I don’t trust them.
Don’t know a ton about the character, but he looked crazy fun in person at Power Con.
Oh dear lordy lord, fellas.... I got a Jim. For those interested - I did not buy it myself or know that it had been purchased for me. My wife knew I had talked about finding a vintage one a bunch of times (but never did it) and she vaguely remembered me mentioning this new one but couldn't remember more than that. Then she heard about the Ali figures on Insta or something and grabbed me one along with the head pack.
So, I've got one because my wife is a sweetheart that always tries to do nice things.
So what do I think completely divorced of my very clear opinions on the people responsible for producing it -- with the caveat that these MAY be some type of factory reject or they may not? It's fine. Pretty good even. Is it worth the BBTS price? I.. don't think so. Not because PDNA are scumbags (they are), but just because I think it's kind of expensive for what you get. I think that about a lot of figures these days so take that with a grain of salt.
It's tough because most of the stuff here is done competently, just not in a way that I'm super impressed by except in the barest sense of 'they didn't mess this up.' I feel like that level of workmanship is starting to be held up as a gold standard just because we have companies like Super7 out here demanding hilarious amounts of money for product that is bottom-of-the-barrel in terms of actual care and quality.
In that sense - PDNA certainly did not go with the absolute minimum effort. Perfect world I think he'd benefit from a few more expressive hands (thumbs up and pointing would be great) - maybe in place of some of the extra heads that are VERY similar to other heads. I would have liked to see a way to give the head a little more range of motion. It seems like it -should- be able to move around more than it does, so maybe this one is stuck, but it doesn't feel like anything that should move isn't.
The big issue with mine, and again this is 'could be a reject' territory, is that the hips are not nearly tight enough for how bulky the upper body is. I can get him and keep him standing in vanilla poses, but anything that doesn't have the torso directly over the hips and feet causes his hips to give out. Definitely not a figure I'd be able to put in any kind of action pose on the shelf, even just temporarily. He'd fall over in seconds.
Accessories are good. Don't really know what else I could ask for there. When you count the head pack as part of the overall presentation of the figure - it's actually crazy how expressive you can be with him. I've had him for a week or so and he spent a lot of that time on the shelf with the burned-up head and open hands. Hilarious.
Nothing egregious besides the bad hips, though. The rest of the figure feels tight and sturdy. Parts swap easily - though the heads don't seem to like to work nicely with the bare worm body. Also, the worm body just doesn't really stand up well on its own, in my experience. You really have to have the head in a very specific pose to not overweight the body in any direction.
Minor stuff, though. Even the hips I'd give a pass on for a company that's still fairly new (although PDNA really isn't because they've released plenty of figures already and should be able to QC better than this, but again we don't know that these are approved for sale by PDNA so I can't put that on them). I'd say it's a good figure, if a bit overpriced at retail. I'd also still say that I would never knowingly give these fuckbags any money so... still do not recommend. Unless the Ali figures are all stolen or run-offs. In which case you should definitely get them because they're pretty good and lots of fun to play with.
Just bought EWJ, cant wait.
Dont know how this came from China in 5 days but that was super fast. Holy shit, even china is beating USPS in speed?
(Measured height - 6" inches)
anybody know if the backpack comez off?
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