MrJBrick Big Barda! (Patreon)

Hey cool! It’s a new hard to find MrJBrick Minifig!

I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times! MrJBrick doesn’t miss! From the killer quality to the perfect Lego-ification of characters, this fig yet again continues that upward trend for MrJ that just doesn’t stop!

Honestly I couldn’t have asked for a better fig of this classic Jack Kirby design! It’s got the chainmail, the vibrant colors, and the balance of the artistry in Jack’s work and Lego’s own graphic design that really makes this fig look like it popped right out of a TT Videogame!

The wraparound print for this fig is some stellar quality! Just focusing on the scales around the arms and torso, my goodness that’s clean!

This fig also uses a three-layered technique to simulate reflective gold that I really enjoy. Having the base layer of gold be a shiny drum lacquer, then an overlaying yellow-gold print over the top of it to accent highlights, plus a dark tan layer for shading that makes it look SO good!

Last time I’ve seen gold printing this nice was back on OzBrick’s WW84! 

The only thing I would have changed (and this is a huge nitpick) would have been the inclusion of a war-enraged expression. Like the second grumpy face is decent, but like a wild wide-mouthed, crazy-eyed battle cry face would have been waaaaay better!

War cries into battle are Big Barda’s thing, so it’s a bit of a miss for me personally. So of course since it didn’t come with one, I used the CMF Black Canary head to fill that hole in my heart! :)

Okay wait hold up, there’s two things I’d change. I would have liked to have seen MrJBrick’s attempt at the Mega Rod (or power wand depending on your retcon).

While I like the standard gold “lightsaber handle” piece to represent the Fourth-World sci-fi tool, it feels a tad cheap. Buuuut also on the other hand this fig only cost me $80 and a bit of begging the right people to acquire. For the amount of print around all aspects of the fig, plus two custom parts, I'd say $80 is worth the bang for your buck and I can deal with the cheap lightsaber.

As for the other custom parts, the cape is perfectly serviceable and doesn’t restrict the poseability of this fig too much! Oh and check this out! You can pair it with some of those old official Lego shoulder pauldrons like I did for some extra height because they fit together perfectly! Even with the headpiece on, it doesn’t look all that bad with a standard Lego cape either! A triple win for the custom parts included!

Of course speaking of capes, MrJBrick also included a green molded cape! No doubt to match the motif of this Big Barda fig to your already existing Mr Miracle CMF! It looks pretty funky on the official fig but it could be just how settled/comfortable I am with the original CMF that throws me off…

Also comparing the two hard capes side by side, this green one looks so stiff and lifeless compared to the red one. I mean the red one has a cool twisty thing going on down the middle, plus the tapering it does to lead up to the shoulders *chefs kiss!*

Okay now look back at the green one. See what I mean! It looks like it should be hanging over some mannequin in a New Gods department store!

Finally lets talk about this helmet and bring this review home!

I did notice that the black plastic of the headpiece isn’t quite a pure black when compared to official Lego elements. You can see even without comparing parts to parts, the black print across this entire fig is still darker than that headpiece should be.

Same can also be said about the “tiara” section of the headpiece. Should be a strong solid red color, and it’s certainly more on the pink side.

On the inside of the element, it’s also a little scrappy, but while it sounds like I’m really digging down on this headpiece, it’s absolutely fantastic! It’s perfect in nearly every aesthetic way possible! The gold is nice and shiny and the molding/shaping work here is just stunning!

All in all, my final thoughts are very positive! I preordered it in mid July from Singapore, and it arrived by mid September. It wasn’t a terrible preorder wait, but it still took a few months longer than these things should. It was a shame that this fig was limited to only fifty-five copies. …I guess that great quality doesn’t come all that easy?

Of course all I can say now doesn’t need to be said, but I’ll say it anyway; MrJBrick really loves the classics and absolutely nails the Lego-fication of every minifig they make!

As always, if they keep makin‘em, I’ll keep buyin’em!