Rosetta Minifigures' DCEU Shazam! (Patreon)

Hey cool! A new customizer on the scene!

Rosetta Minifigures have been around for about a year or so now, and I’ve finally bit the bullet for one of their figs! I mean how could I resist this neat Billy Batson!

For being new on the scene, they’ve got some decent production quality behind them... however this fig isn’t quite 10/10. It’s a shame, but you can see that right out of the case, the gold across this fig doesn't match with the gauntlets. Then I’ve course as soon as you tilt those legs back, BAM! You’re hit with bright red plastic that shows you what the detail work did to the dull the color of this fig.

I mean these blank spots...

...are so...

...frustrating

While that one-two punch really hit me hard'n'fast, and I may or may not have a love/hate relationship with this fig now.... I still feel the need to call out just how impressive this fig is (from like, a display perspective I guess... it's kind of a photographers let-down though)

If Rosetta had actually gone all out and completed those dark red spirals, this woulda improved the fig by quite a lot. And sure! The gold is still bright and shiny! Plus that yellow on the emblem is as saturated as they come! I love what they did to also create the illusion of glow! Just the right amount of bright light yellow to do the trick over standard yellow!

Like... this is a good fig! It reached the bar of "is this worth the money I paid for it". But like... I don't feel good about it... I feel a little like Rosetta fully intended this fig to be put in a display window and never played with (by adults).

...but by that line of thinking, why include the bonus heads?

For me, the weakest point of Roestta’s design are in those head prints. Zachary Levi is constantly smiling and cheesing it up on screen and both of these faces look pretty neutral (yes even the bubblegum face feels a little bland and unimpressed). Not to mention that the cheekbones and extra facial lines seemed to have aged him up a good twenty years.

Oh and before I forget to mention it, Rosetta advertised this fig to having UV Reactive Ink, so here’s what that looks like under a blacklight. It only significantly affects one of the head prints. The rest of the fig has virtually no reaction (based on the tools I have)

So sure, the main expression makes Billy look like an aging 1960s rock star. Let's just swap the head put and... 

We'll just uh... just swap out the head and... wait hold on... 

That is… if you can get the head off!

Mine wouldn't even twist until I busted out the pliers! Then of course I couldn't get it back on when I was done 😑

Okay Andrew... deep breaths... think... of the... positives...

The custom parts are really what sold this fig to me!

The hair is a nice shiny ABS appearing plastic that’s soft and Lego-like, and not too overly detailed (honestly the goal for all customs that struggle to achieve). That cape is probably my favorite part of this fig though! Its shaping is just bang-on perfect, but Rosetta went the extra mile to print over the whole thing!

Printing on the lapels, both sides of the border, AND around curved surfaces! Wow! You can even sorta make out how they tried to replicate the two tigers on each of the lapels.

Well I say that but like… you really have to squint to see it. At that scale, things tend to get lost in the ink, but Rosetta’s attention to that level of detail is commendable!

As for the little lightning elements, I’m again just a bit disappointed by them (just like everything else with this fig inevitably)

During the initial preorder phase, they were going to be fused/molded/painted as proper hand elements that would fit into the arms, but here we are… Rosetta didn’t seem to include the finger gun hands that were shown in the preorder stage. Evn more furstrating is how they didn’t notify the public/collectors about the change.

Instead they opted for just a simplified lightning bolt pieces to just handheld elements, and scrapping the cool hands all together. I guess it makes sense for ease of production on their part, but again there wasn’t a notification of the change, and frankly it was one of the aspects I was most keen to talk about!

It’s interesting how with the elements sent out, there’s still the indentation of where the Lego fingers would have slotted into place, almost as if they cut out the hand from the digital 3D model and didn’t take the time to fill in the gaps. 

Or perhaps they were left there intentionally so folks would know which hand they belong to when using them in photos? (no that's not right either because if you pose the figure, the exposed unprinted bright red shows up!)

Idk man… I was just really looking forward to those funky hands :(

Of course one last thing to talk about is the Lab9 fig in the room! (yall know I had to!)

Lab9’s Shazam fig from 2019 had been truly unrivaled until today… and uh… well it still isn’t if you ask me!

I'll give it to Rosetta for really refining the look and feel of the Shazam Movie suit in ways that only come with time and improved Pad Printing methods. Same thing could be said about the custom parts! However that dark red detailing really takes away from the brightness of this new fig.

Nether one are perfect figs. Lab9’s old hair and cape certainly feel a little dated, plus the face isn’t great. Rosetta’s cape and hair are perfect, but a majority of the fig isn’t quite right.

But when you smash’em together and throw in an official Lego head… 👀

Wow! Now we're talkin! That’s a pretty nice lookin fig!

(man now I've gotta wrap all this up in a few paragraphs because I'm out of photos)

My final thoughts on this new brand:

All in all, I’m still pleased with what we have here from Rosetta. It’s not quite what I spent my $100 to pre-order, but it’s close! If anything though you could say that I paid too much for a few parts to build a better fig with old parts…

Idk, I’m not like, mad about it… but I’m also not knocked out of my chair blown away super duper mondo impressed like how Jaka's Wonder Woman shook me. This Shazam is just a middle of the road fig by a brand that has some good potential!

I’ll certainly be keeping an eye out for their future releases!