Jin Customs "Avengers 2012" Captain America (Patreon)

It’s a New Year and I’m feeling pretty lucky right now! I scored this Jin Captain America off the second hand market just a wee bit before Christmas, and only paid $75 for it! Not a bad deal if you ask me! 

If memory serves, this was one of the earliest figs under Jin’s “Lite” branding,  and let me tell you this is anything but!

For a fig that initially went up for presale back in summer 2022, this is a nice quality fig! Not only that, but Jin even made a color chase-variant in standard blue! 

It’s one of those figs that became quickly hard to get a hold of during Jin’s personal “war on knockoffs” at the time. (TLDR: a few of Jin’s designs were stolen by knock-off brands and Jin went awol. They pulled out from all of their resellers until the heat died down. When Jin returned, he was being a dramatic little sook about the whole thing and to this day only sells figs through like three people. Of course that meant that the secondhand prices of Jin figs skyrocket rapidly during all of their claims to leave "the community forever!", and other such nonsense) 🙄

But regardless of the drama, this fig has a lot of love about it!

That 360° print work around the legs, the inclusion of extra head prints, plus the custom parts… I mean all together, it’s a solid fig even so many years later! I mean just check out this helmet design!

The helmet headpiece(s) are rather innovative in their concept. The two-part top and bottom of Cap’s helmet fit together really well, however that bottom half is a little thicker than I’d like it to be, relative to the helmet. It gives him a sort of jowl-like thing going on around the cheeks that I don;t care for from some angles.

Oh and the hair included won’t fit at the same time as the collar piece. …not that anyone would want to combine them together, but hey I wanted to try it!

But if you don't like the helmet, you can use the printed head in place of the fleshy one! But uh... things don’t quite line up all that well… particularly around the sides where the “ears” would be. The thickness and overall proportions look better like this in my min (only using the top half of the headpiece), but it’s a shame it’s not better aligned.

And while we’re on the topic, let’s just take a moment to ask Jin why he thought minifigure’s ears would be down at the base of their jawline. Because uh… this is just weird…

Anyway! This helmet/collar concept, while not the most 100% pleasing to the eye as I’d like, does hold some interesting benefits! Like for one thing, it provides me with the unique opportunity of head swapping to my heart’s content!

(yall know I love a good head swap)

As for the rest of the custom parts, the glove toppers (glove sleeves? ...glove... pants...?) are really nicely 3D designed as well, and even include a little bit of silver print!

Not much to see underneath them however…

Oh and Loki's Scepter! Talk about a fun bonus inclusion!

It’s got some nice fine detail in it’s sculpt. I presume the whole element is trans light blue, then painted over. You can see where a little bit of the silver has rubbed away with time, but also tiniest bit of gold ink splatter on one side of the gem. It’s a shame about that little air bubble right in it’s center though.

Personally I think I would have rather gotten a custom shield at the end of the day though... sayin jus sayin 🤷🏻‍♂️

Oh and how can I not talk about some other minifig comparisons!

It’s hard not to compare Jin to Phoenix Customs recent MCU 2012 Cap from last year. I mean just looking at these two side-by-side… woof…

Kinda weird right?

Jin's "technically" came out first, so why did PCB opt solely to go with standard Lego blue and dark red?! I mean come on, PCB did the whole head pack expansion thing for this fig but never any color variants?

ngl, it’s a real shame that the PCB’s fig wasn’t the correct color scheme, because the PCB helmet is so much better, (plus those head prints would have a bunch of fun to swap with Jin’s fig)!

But I still think I’ll give it to PCB for their helmet shaping. It’s much better and far less egg like 🥚

But hey, at the end of the day, Jin’s fig is still the superior! It’s simplified line work isn’t overly complicated for me, the star is nice and clear, and the main colors are correct! That’s it’s biggest leg up!

All in all this fig is really solid! I’m really pleased to have finally found one!