Opinion Wanted

Expensive! 

I have never had Resin kits prior to February of this year.  I purchased quite a few figures from Verlinden, Warrior and Jaguar.  I like the fact that they offer more variety to choose from and and the quality is great.  From what I understand, it is more pain in the butt compared to conventional plastic kits because you have to use a Razor saw to cut and use super glue to put them together.  I also like Andrea and Legend figures as well. 

Each has their pros and cons, but overall, they're all decent. I've got my issues with Verlinden, but Warriors, Nemrod and Jaguar are generally very good.

 Expensive is right though. It was one of the factors that led me to start sculpting. Unfortunately, casting resin is expensive, and mold making silicone is even more expensive (the last model making company I worked for spent $40k on 55 gallon drums of silicone every month! A single drum can cost as much as $5000). And the molds don't last forever, so more have to be made, which takes more silicone. You'll notice occasionally that you'll find small chunks of pink or blue rubber stuck in the parts of a resin kit. That means the mold is starting to break down, getting brittle and losing it's releasing characteristics which keeps the resin from sticking to the rubber. That cost gets passed on to us at the cash register of our LHS.

Verlinden has a lot of figures, and they cover a wide range of subjects for both 54mm and 120mm, which is nice for figure modelers because they have a figure for whatever your interest is, but I find many of their poses to be stiff and unlifelike. Clothes aren't always sculpted in a realistic fashion either. Still, other figures by Verlinden are real gems. It all depends on who sculpted the figure in question. That's really what it boils down to with any of the manufacturers though. Who sculpted the figure. Some sculptors are better than others, or are better at certain aspects of sculpting the human form than others.

 Assembly can be a pain in the keester, as M1 said. Casting plugs and such, which need to be sawn off. Sometimes the molds shift or get squished during the resin curing process and you get nasty parting lines and often part distortion. That can't always be fixed either. The QC process is usually pretty good in packaging and shipping, but a bad one gets by now and then. That can happen with white metal figures too, but it seems to be a more common occurance with resin.

Agree with M1Garand and plymonkey.

Resin and white metal figures are more expensive than styrene, but normally you get what you pay for: more detail.

Besides what plymonkey mentioned sometimes you can find resin figures with air bubbles, but that's more common with minor companies, not the ones you mentioned.

There is a thing about US modern 54mm Verlinden figures: they were not accurate in the uniforms. They had soldiers from "Desert Storm" with Viet-Nam style fatigues and equipment ... easy way to sell more figure with small changes!

 

Those guys said it all. I'll give my $.02 on the ones I've been collecting:

I'm partial to Warriors and Nemrod. Lots of action, realism. Mid-road price range. From what I understand, Warriors passes off their molds to Lincoln County Line. This knocks a couple bucks off the price, but defects are more likely.

I'm building up a sizeable Jaguar collection; great poses but I'm seeing lots of seam lines. Don't know if that's a characteristic of the company or not.

I agree wholeheartedly with the opinion that Verlinden is stiff. They also seem a slightly out of 1/35... I heard more like 1/32.

Aires is too expensive for me. They also look stiff, but I haven't seen the entire collection.

Resination is expensive but look better to me. They don't have very many action poses, tho.

I love Hornet heads, Warriors heads a litte too cartoonish for me. But a good Hornet head can bring even a mediocre plastic figure to life.

Go to VLS website;

http://www.modelmecca.com/

For Verlinden figures go:

http://www.verlinden-productions.com/product_listing/figures_135_scale.html

Hope this lengthy monologue helps.

Steve

I've had very limited experience with resin figures, but they are a cut and above plastic offering. You pay the price for that obviously. Personally, I like Verlinden figures, but they are not all the same, as some are quite bad, and others are just amazing. A lot of their Allied stuff is fantastic.

Thanks to everyone for their input. I do not have much experience with resin figures and I am thinking about giving them a try. I figure this would be the best place to come for info about the different makers of the figures and learn what problems they have. I am thinking about starting with a single figure in just a regular standing type pose. I am thinking about eventually adding a figure or two to my armor models. This will be an interesting learning process.