JinCustoms MCU Ant-Man! (Patreon)

I’ll admit, I was a bit hesitant at first to shill out the $140 for this fig, but having it in hand has really changed my opinions! I mean just look at this thing!

A really clean fig that’s not too over textured! All with a helmet is nice and shiny AND that ingenious shrinking-effect!

Just perfect stuff all around!

However I think I’m gonna start with the least exciting thing this time around; the facial design…. Jin’s gotten better with faces, but this one still leaves me with a desire to swap it for something else.

…

Okay now that the negatives are out of the way! :P

(haha)

Jin did a really neat thing here with printing the textures! For that torso, you can see they colorblocked a darker red underneath a bight red grid-like mesh pattern that when overlayed creates this really cool gradient!

I said it once, but it bears repeating, the design translation wasn’t over-complicated. The suit in the movies is a bit much in places, and Jin picked up on just the essential details without making the print feel too crowded!

It’s some true understanding of their printing tech, combined with a clear and conscious design goal! It’s also worth mentioning that the red matches the entire fig over! There’s no weird color variances anywhere that I could find! Same with the silver! Really bright and shiny stuff here that matches with all the custom elements!

Speaking of custom parts….

That helmet! Oh my gosh it’s fantastic!

The use of magnets inside the faceplate is just so clever! You can have the mask in either an open or closed position without requiring little plastic teeth to hold it in place like we’ve seen most commonly with Iron Man figs

Not to mention that the printwork on the custom elements are clean as well! That red and silver are so sharp and clean!

AND those red lenses are so big and see through! You can easily see inside the mask to the eyes and it looks GREAT!

(I think the more I stare at this fig, the more I like it)

I really do appreciate Jin’s effort to convey Ant-Man’s “powers” here with the trans-red element! I’ve said it quite a lot in Jin reviews, they are very clever minifig designers, and their ideas continually shine through with their custom parts.

Makes me think back to their ingenious Sandman fig that I still love so dearly, creating simple yet effecting aspects to change a fig (like the ball joint head or the over-bodied sand elements)

This shrinking effect is no different! It’s so smart! It’s… well it’s just simple Jinovation!

(that was a terrible joke)

But smart ideas aren’t the only thing I’m looking for here! Functionality and quality are also at play. That Sandman fig of the past had a wobbly balljoint… it wasn’t perfect, but this Ant-Man fig… well it’s not over reaching!

As far as the matierial used for the effect element, it’s not as transparent as I was led to believe. Nothing too wild, but I was hoping for something a little closer to Lego’s official Trans-Red.

This plastic loses its color at the tips of the element. Most notably the antenna and the extended right arm. These areas are just a tinge pink (and even in some places, totally clear). I’m not sure if this is just a variance in production, or if the entire run of them were like this.

Also something worth talking about is the random rough patches around the bottom and sides of the feet. It looks like the element was sanded down at one point. (for what reason though, could be anybody’s guess)

It’s a shame too, because the sanding basically covers any aspect of transparency the piece has. I’m just glad it’s not all over the entire piece!

Oh and I almost forgot! This piece has a magnet too! (Jin really loves their magnets!)

For one thing, it helps guide the fig and belt into place and saves time for alignment. But the big main reason for it is so you can pose the price upward or down without the fig falling off and not requiring a Lego-like connection point

At the end of the day I’ve got positive opinions on this fig! It was a bit pricey, but you can see where the money went into this fig! I for one think it turned out great! :)