Vitruvian Hacks Coral Gorgon Review
It has been almost 2 years since we first heard of the name Vitruvian Hacks and we have our first figure in hand! Today we’re reviewing the Coral Gorgon from series 1 of Vitruvian Hacks.
The packaging is a horizontal card slid into the back of a full card bubble. This is similar to some anime figure packaging where the bubble has small flaps that go around the card. This allows you to open the packaging without damaging it so you can always put the figure back in for a nice display. Typically when you see this type of packaging, the bubble flaps are either taped or stapled to the card. There is nothing actually attaching the card and bubble together in this case. I’ve found it easiest to bend the fold furthest away from the figure to pull the card out. The fold easily bends back in place and the whole package stays together well.
The Coral Gorgon figure looks great! As the name suggests, the figure is painted up like a Coral snake. The humanoid half features removable armor on her forearms, torso and head.
The sculpting detail on this figure is amazing. Tons of individually sculpted snake scales can be found along the entire length of the tail and all along the head and face.
The Coral Gorgon comes with the armor I previously mentioned, a sword, shield, spare hands and a figure stand. I find the figure stand a little funny since this figure has no feet to plug onto the foot pegs.
The spare hands look exactly like the ones on the Coral Gorgon figure, but they have a differently aligned wrist joint. Both sets of hands can swivel. One set has a hinge to allow the hands to go up and down while the other set has a hinge to allow them to go back and forth.
The body construction on this figure consists of a lot of ball & socket articulation. In fact, everything except for the arms has ball & socket articulation. The snake tail is multi segmented with alternating double ball & double socket pieces that then have a soft rubber like covering that makes the skin of the snake tail. The torso has a ball joint at the waist and mid chest. The neck is a double ball joint to allow a large range of movement. The arms are your standard swivel hinge joints at the shoulders, elbows and wrists.
The back of the figure sports a standard backpack peg hole that can fit backpacks from a few different toylines to add to the customization aspect of these figures. The armor does not have any holes on the back though so in order to use backpacks, you’ll have to either drill a hole in the armor or not use the armor.
The Coral Gorgon is a good fit with other 1:18th scaled figures and has similar proportions in the humanoid half. Though the arms are the thinnest I’ve ever seen on any 1:18th figure.
The sword can fit in all four hands well due to their flexibility, but the right hands seem more open for the sword’s large handle while the left hands seem a bit more closed to work with the smaller shield handle.
The shield is nicely sculpted on the inside as well as the outside. There is a handle for the hand to grasp, and there is a slightly bendable clip that goes around the forearm. I’ve found you can slide the arm through the clip and not worry about the hand holding the grip as the shield will still stay on rather well. I’ve also found that if you do want the hand to hold the shield grip, it’s easier to put the grip in the hand first, then pry open the forearm clip and swing the shield towards the arm until the clip is wrapped around the arm. (By easier, I mean it’s easier than getting the hand around the grip after the arm is in the clip, neither method is exactly as easy as just sliding the shield on the forearm) At the corners of the inner shield, there are four tiny loops. Boss Fight Studio has shown on Facebook that you can run a small thread through these loops to create straps for the figures to carry the shield on their backs.
The multi segmented tail works really well for posing the Coral Gorgon. Some poses are much easier than others. It can become a bit of a balancing act, but since the entire figure has so many points of articulation, minor adjustments over the full figure can give you some impressive poses.
There are only a few drawbacks to this figure and most are very minor issues. The one main problem is the helmet. The tail of the helmet only allows the head to move up a slight bit before the helmet tail is hitting the figure’s back. I think if the helmet tail was a bendable piece or if they put a ball joint at the base of the helmet, this issue wouldn’t exist.
One of the other issues is probably more my issue than anything else. The very tip of the snake tail keeps popping off. It’s a full rubber piece and I keep trying to move it like there’s an extra articulation point in it when there isn’t.
The last issue may be a problem to others, I didn’t even notice it until I was writing this review so I can’t exactly call it a problem for me. The torso armor hinders the mid torso joint quite a bit. In most any other toy, this would be a pretty big problem that would be noticed right away, but the Coral Gorgon’s massive amount to articulation may have made the mid torso joint redundant as I’ve been posing the figure for a full day now and just realized the armor keeps that joint from bending forwards and backwards. You can still twist it, though that does open the armor a bit. And let me commend Boss Fight Studios on the design of that armor, for 8-9 years now I’ve been struggling with similar vests in the GI Joe toyline. Most of them are really hard to close with their peg/hole system. The Coral Gorgon armor has the same system, but it’s set up in such a way that you just have to press the front half against the back half. This completes most of the job, but there are also sculpted straps right by the holes the pegs go into that you can grip with your fingernail to add that extra needed tension to fully close the armor. These sculpted straps have made putting the armor back on this figure 100 times easier than ANY modern GI Joe vest.
I can’t say enough good things about this figure. Highly detailed with a wonderful sculpt and articulation that rivals anything on the market right now. This is the first successful multi-segmented snake tail on a figure I’ve ever seen. The fact that the tail enhances the figure rather than be a hindrance is a HUGE plus! If you haven’t already preordered any of the Vitruvian Hacks figures, you are missing out!