KO Customs & Diamond Custom Bricks Gambit! (Patreon)

Bonjour mon ami! KO is back yet again with another X-Men fig! This time with the collaborative help of Diamond Custom Bricks!

I’ve been absolutely loving KO's X-Men series so far, which means I just had to snag this kooky card shark! However, KO’s perfect streak of perfect X-Figs might have gotten a little bumpy this time around. I gotta be honest… I think this one missed the mark with its overall design… but we’ll get there in time, because everything else about it is great!

Most notable being the energy effects and custom cards!

Those transparent hands and cards and the swiped action effect are a really cool idea! Certainly a neat way of displaying Gambit's kinetic powers! In some ways that curved effect piece almost feels like something from a hasbro-type action figure! But given that it’s a unique one of a kind sort of concept, it really works well!

I should also mention that the transparent quality of the piece! No air bubbles or weird color shading! It’s exactly what it’s supposed to be and matches really well to Lego-Official Trans-Dark-Pink that KO/DCB used for the cards! :)

Even the cards look great on their own, but also SO much better when attached to the action accessory! The white in is printed really well around five sides of the element, and never chipped or rubbed off when placed into a minifigure hand!

Same couldn’t quite be said about the custom 4L Bar. as far as I could tell, that piece was fully printed over a standard white 4L bar. I suppose that makes sense just how rare dark grey bars can be to get in bulk, but it was already a little chipped up down the length of one side of the piece. It was like this right out of the clamshell and never touched either types of hands.

The custom hands are also a nice inclusion, but they’re too big and actually cracked one of the arms! 😡

(this was where things started to go south for me)

The hair choice is interesting isn’t it? I never did like that old Zombie Guy hair; it was a bit too rounded and fluffy looking for my taste. But even weirder is that the one included here for Gambit is a custom part designed to look like an official piece! It’s designed specifically to pair with the custom collar (because of how tight that element is to the back of the head), leaving you unable to swap any other hairpieces while the collar is attached.

Given the tandem aspect of these two parts, neither one is usable on their own. Given that this hair was custom, at the very least we could have gotten a design that was more on the top of his head like his hair in the comics. Hell, if KO/DCB wanted to match the design of an official Lego hair, the could have gone with a sleeker element (like the swooped back Superman hair from 2016) with the bottom half removed.

Gambit has that weird sock-mask thing that 90% of the time only lets the top of his hair out. So it just baffles me that both collaborative designers on this fig collectively decided to go for the “full head of hair” look

Now… I also gotta talk about these custom coat elements!

They’re interesting, certainly! The collar is big and wide and huge and I love it! But man, the fact that It hinders almost all other hair optionsis a real drag. Not to mention that it’s got these two little thin bits on the front where these two “teeth”( for lack of a better term) hold it from rotating freely. Those teeth could have been longer to reach the custom hip element. They could have also been thicker, then taper towards the torso…

But of course… *sigh* that brings me to the most polarizing aspect of this fig. The weird hip cape trench coat… thing.

Some people hate it, other people don't hate it as much. I’m also somewhere in the hater camp for a number of reasons. I would have (maybe) preferred to see something more akin to Abnormal’s Bruce Wayne Trenchcoat than this two piece situation of collar’n’coat tails... but the aesthetic isn't the only thing I dislike about the piece.

It severely hinders the figure flexibility and looks super stiff in most action poses… or even neutral poses for that matter. With the piece looking more like a cardboard box and less like fabric, it kinda defetes the point of including an action energy effect if all Gambit can do is stand there.

idk

It’s just… there’s something clunky about the design flow. I struggle see the piece resembling fabric of any kind, but that could just be my own brain. However, on a positive note, I really really love the color choice! Using the new/old(?) Lego Official Medium Brown is genuinely lovely to see on a custom fig! :)

Even without two coat pieces, the design is good! I really find it funny that just removing the waist piece improves this figure and showcases more of the nice and clean 360° leg printing! (printed in the old Pearl Sand Blue color which is fun!) :)

One thing I’m a little on the fence about is the face. The designs for the head are too simple for me. Again it comes back to “Well that doesn't look like Gambit! Where’s the roguish charm? The smirky smarmy stubbled butt-chin?!”

KO/DCB instead decided to continue on the trend of designing around something that would look line an official minifig. But we all know that official minifigs look bad! That’s why we buy customs! It’s day one stuff!

The eyes are too large, there’s no sharp cheekbones or stubble, ;leaving the final fig with a baby face. The expressions are also too similar to each other where I would have at least liked to have seen some gritted teeth or something!

…phew…

I think that’s everything! Man this was a dense review!

All in all I think I like about half of this fig.

Torso, Legs, Custom Energy Effects, all good stuff! With some minor tweaking, you can barf this figure into something a little more palatable.

But I still have to hand it to KO’s business model! Given just how many custom parts are included here, plus the nice quality print applications, AND the fact this fig wasn’t sold as a preorder, the $75 price tag feels like a steal!

Despite the bumpy ride we have here, I’m really hoping KO keeps these X-Figs coming! I’d love to get a Rogue to pair with Gambit here! Maybe a classic mohawk Storm? Or even an old school bright blue and yellow Cyclops to go with their Wolverine!

Oh well! Only time will tell!