NEW PRODUCT: POPTOYS: 1/6 Armored Series Europa Wars-(90% Alloy) Griffon Knight/Flying Dragon Knight & Warhorse

I ordered the knights from Poptoys store - I think the only downside could be tax depending on where you live - but I think it is well worth the risk if you see the difference in pricing. (First time ordering via poptoys directly, too)

Asmus also sells directly and is often faster than stores and gives special items on top of it for their figures. I don't buy via asmus because pricing is similar than stores I order in Europe and there I don't have to pay tax on top of it then.


Edit: I guess kghobby just put them up for good prices too. With shipping it will be similar.

I’ve never ordered direct from Pop, but I order all of my LOTR figures from Asmus.

What’s the link for the Pop Toys store?

https://poptoys.net/  

Only stumbled on it via facebook

Valiarde wrote:https://poptoys.net/  

Only stumbled on it via facebook

Cool. Thanks.

gooboo wrote:Saw on Poptoys' site that the PO price for the knights is $172. Ekia has them for around $220 and BBTS has them for $240. Is there any reason why people wouldn't pre-order from the manufacturer? I was just wondering because I would definitely like to order them from Poptoys themselves for less money, but was curious if there are some benefit to ordering from a store. Prior to this I've always gotten things from online stores.

wow.. POPtoys got them for cheap. $172 shipped to USA

KGHobby is similarly priced BUT WITH $25 shipping ON TOP OF THE $170 price

p.s. i can't seem to get poptoys to send me verification email..

I got a knight and a horse for $268 from Poptoys' website. On BBTS a knight alone is around $240. Seems like a pretty good deal to me.

Got shipment notice from Poptoys last week

Interesting, I haven't gotten any emails from them yet.

Got my knight and horse in the mail today- wasn't even expecting it, as I never got any shipping notification. On the package itself the label said it was from Castle Collectibles, and I was totally confused because I never remembered ordering from them. They must be Poptoys U.S. distributor? The actual toy box itself said Poptoys, but it looks like it was packaged and shipped from someone else. I don't know how that stuff works.

Anyways, I absolutely love the quality of the armor of this figure. I wasn't certain what to expect in terms of actual product vs. promotional photographs, but I really like the way the armor turned out. The paint looks very nice, and it feels quite sturdy. The only thing that would make it even better is if it had actual chainmail, but that would likely have been prohibitively expensive. The shirt and pants are faux, cloth chainmail. The only quibble I have about her outfit is that the helmet is rather difficult to put on with her hair in the way, although that doesn't bother me too much since I like her without her helmet on.

Some of her accessories I don't really have any interest in, like the surcoat, so I didn't bother to take pictures of them.







I decided I liked the orange/red horse more than the black one, so that's the one I got for her to ride on.



I don't really know anything about horse anatomy or accuracy, so I won't really go into that. I don't really know anything about saddles, bridles, etc. either. It's a little tricky to get her to sit upright in her saddle.



I like the headsculpt a lot on this figure. I thought she looks appealing without being overly stylized. I find myself even liking her synthetic hair, which is a rarity these days since I started hairing my own headsculpts.

The only thing that annoys me with this figure are the hands. This is the first Poptoys figure I've ever gotten, and they use a different set up for hands and feet than Tbleague models. Their little pegs don't hold onto the hands that well, and I find that they fall off the arms rather easily. Also the hands are made out of a really inflexible plastic, so it's rather difficult to open them up a bit so hold onto something like her lance. At least the grip on the weapons will be really strong once you do get them in her hands.

I am absolutely loving these -- a very recent impulse buy that fulfilled this year's "buy myself something unexpected for Christmas" mandate with slim pickings as all the physical stores are in lockdown. In all respects much better than I expected except one glaring problem. As gooboo notes the helmet (technically armet) is near impossible to put on, at least on the Griffin Knight (haven't yet tried the Dragon Knight). Evidently they didn't want the armet to seem oversized, or the head inside it to be undersized, but in the result, fitting it is impossible. Mine quickly broke apart into a bunch of pieces. I may be able to get it back on reglued and looking tolerable, but it probably doesn't have on/off switch capacity any more. Still I like the figures overall to the point I can get past that defect, which is saying something. Can't speak to the horses as they did not come in at the same time.

Looks like they did pretty well, apart from that helmet's functionality.

I bought this figure and pressed the sword in her hand...the hand broke :/ So i switched the body...ughhh

Getting that armor off took a while...back on an eternity lol. Those little straps aaaah, I needed two tweezers.

Will posts some picks later this week too.

Gooboo: Do you know how to put these hait inside the helmets? I think with Jeanne D'aRc you got two heads, one for showing off and one with short hair for the helmet.
Here I can't get the heads into the damn helmets.

I managed to put her helmet on only after removing the head from the body first and putting it back on only after I secured the helmet. Even then it's a pretty tight squeeze. I'm thinking I'll just buy another Poptoys head and cut the hair off and use that one for the helmet whenever I want to put it on.



You can see her hands fell off again, hah.

That's what I don't like about these PopToys bodies -- the hands are an absolute PITA to put back on, and nearly impossible with these armor/cuff pieces interfering. Nightmare. Seriously, how hard is it to make a body that isn't total garbage...?

Ooh yeah, that armour looks great! My dad used to work with a guy at the museum - Dr Tobias Capwell - who has a very similar set in real life. We saw him joust once and it looks bloody painful if you get hit, I can tell you!




Regarding the horse tack - you’ve put the bridle on upside down by the looks of it - the reins should connect to the mouth rather than hang around the neck.

That is some gorgeous armor, Christine.

I know, right?! I think it cost him over 20k to have made but it’s absolutely stunning!

Lynkhart wrote:I know, right?! I think it cost him over 20k to have made but it’s absolutely stunning!

Wow, still, if you are going to spend 20K on armor, it better end up looking this stunning, indeed. It often occurs to me that while we complain about the cost of these things as sixth-scale toys collectibles, the real thing was (proportionately) very, very expensive, partly accounting for it being largely limited to a certain social/wealth class. This one was clearly a custom and very advanced build, but some of the expensive 1:1 sets if armor made from galvanized steel you can get (most of them are or were made in India) probably cost quite a lot less (again, proportionally) than the real thing would have back in the day.

It's mind-boggling to think of what it would have been like to see one of these contemporaneously, especially if you were say a peasant in a Feudal environment and you hadn't seen anything like it before.  Even just a polished sword blade would have seemed like something magical, because probably you saw very little metal, and all of it rough farming implements and tools.  Any shining object at all was largely outside of your experience, which is why silver and gold and gemstones were such unimagineable status symbols.  And then all of a sudden you saw this guy coming over the hill, looking huge mounted on a similarly armored horse, and coming towards you -- probably to collect feudal payments or something.

How awesome that your dad worked with Tobias Capwell, Lynkhart! Any historical arms and armour afficionado knows that name!

And as for this figure, it does seem to have turned out quite nicely. : )

Lynkhart wrote:Ooh yeah, that armour looks great! My dad used to work with a guy at the museum - Dr Tobias Capwell - who has a very similar set in real life. We saw him joust once and it looks bloody painful if you get hit, I can tell you!




Regarding the horse tack - you’ve put the bridle on upside down by the looks of it - the reins should connect to the mouth rather than hang around the neck.

That is so cool. 20K seems appropriate for something this exquisite.

skywalkersaga wrote:How awesome that your dad worked with Tobias Capwell, Lynkhart! Any historical arms and armour afficionado knows that name!

And as for this figure, it does seem to have turned out quite nicely. : )

Yeah, he used to work in the same museum as my dad, but he moved down to London a while back. I only ever met him the once, and unfortunately it was long before I had a camera or I’d have taken loads of photos of the jousting!
If you ever come up to Glasgow and visit Kelvingrove Museum (which I’m in absolutely no way biased towards ) there’s some great videos of Toby in action as part of the Arms and Armour gallery - they’ve incorporated some natural history into the display, so there’s examples of different animals with natural armour or weaponry, like armadillos and so on, and then the human versions that were inspired by it. It’s really cool!

Lynkhart wrote:

skywalkersaga wrote:How awesome that your dad worked with Tobias Capwell, Lynkhart! Any historical arms and armour afficionado knows that name!

And as for this figure, it does seem to have turned out quite nicely. : )

Yeah, he used to work in the same museum as my dad, but he moved down to London a while back. I only ever met him the once, and unfortunately it was long before I had a camera or I’d have taken loads of photos of the jousting!
If you ever come up to Glasgow and visit Kelvingrove Museum (which I’m in absolutely no way biased towards ) there’s some great videos of Toby in action as part of the Arms and Armour gallery - they’ve incorporated some natural history into the display, so there’s examples of different animals with natural armour or weaponry, like armadillos and so on, and then the human versions that were inspired by it. It’s really cool!

That sounds amazing! Of course I'd love to visit that museum (I will jump at the chance to visit *any* museum, let alone one with arms and armour, lol). Someday, when the pandemic no longer holds us in its grip.... le sigh...

Well if you ever do, let me know! I can give you the tour! XD

Lynkhart wrote:Well if you ever do, let me know! I can give you the tour! XD

Will do for sure!

My Europa Knights finally arrived and I thought I would add some observations and photos. They come in shipping boxes that contain a slipcased product box. Inside that is a dual layer blister pack.







They are already armoured, so no need to assemble, and come wrapped in plastic for protection from scratches. My Griffon Knight's shoulder plate arrived broken loose from it's mate. Probably repairable, but gravity works to makes it invisible in most poses anyway so I'm not sure I will bother trying any time soon.




They are very heavy and stand and pose easily. The armour is realistically somewhat restrictive for some movements. Plastic stands are included but are not necessary unless you're doing extreme poses. The toe of the boot is hinged and pivots a few degrees up.




The "chainmail" is cloth, the Dragon Knight has gold pants while the Griffon has silver.



The swords are metal and the only difference is the crossguard. The short swords are also metal with plastic scabbards and are the same.




The metal shields have an adjustable strap rather than an elastic loop.




The jousting lances are metal and have a Griffon/Dragon emblem on them.



The armour stands are wood with plastic appendages. The stands for the standards are all wood. The cloth banners are weathered and the Dragon/Griffon at the top is nicely detailed. The poles are metal.











gooboo, if anything, undersold just how terrible these hands are. When you barely touch the arms, the hands fall off. The Griffon Knight is better in that respect because the gauntlet's snugness on the forearm helps to keep it in place, but still not great. But the biggest fail is the helmets. As others have noted, they're very difficult to put on and quite fragile. Not cool. This problem really should have been fixed before release. The instruction sheets make it look so easy...





So I'll just have to leave them off for now... I have to add that when I first opened these, I thought the heads weren't that great, but once I started photographing them my opinion quickly changed. They are actually really well done, imo.























As far as cross-brand colour match, these heads do not match Phicen suntan. They are much darker and have a brownish-orange hue.



This can obviously be hidden by hair or clothing or whatever for display, or can be compensated for with lighting in photos.



"Finally got that confounded armour off - I'm going to the beach!"



The necks are a bit lighter than the heads, so if you want to replace the head with a TBL suntan or similarly toned one it doesn't look too bad, although the difference is visible if you're looking for it. Here are a few to illustrate the point with the GOAT...  









Overall, I'm happy with these figures. Easier helmets and tighter hand connections would make them great.
The horses are past their expected delivery date, hopefully they'll arrive soon.

They look pretty great, I'm loving plenty of the details and thank you for illustrating them with such nice photos. The blonde head sculpt worked out very well too. And I love that pink Puma top.

Annalise wrote:My Europa Knights finally arrived and I thought I would add some observations and photos. They come in shipping boxes that contain a slipcased product box. Inside that is a dual layer blister pack.   ...

gooboo, if anything, undersold just how terrible these hands are. When you barely touch the arms, the hands fall off. The Griffon Knight is better in that respect because the gauntlet's snugness on the forearm helps to keep it in place, but still not great. But the biggest fail is the helmets. As others have noted, they're very difficult to put on and quite fragile. Not cool. This problem really should have been fixed before release. The instruction sheets make it look so easy...



So I'll just have to leave them off for now... I have to add that when I first opened these, I thought the heads weren't that great, but once I started photographing them my opinion quickly changed. They are actually really well done, imo.

The necks are a bit lighter than the heads, so if you want to replace the head with a TBL suntan or similarly toned one it doesn't look too bad, although the difference is visible if you're looking for it. Here are a few to illustrate the point with the GOAT...  

Overall, I'm happy with these figures. Easier helmets and tighter hand connections would make them great.
The horses are past their expected delivery date, hopefully they'll arrive soon.

Great post and pics but allow me to disagree slightly:  their helmets are not "very difficult to put on and fragile".  Advanced trigonometry is difficult.  The balance of peace in the Middle East is difficult and fragile.  But these helmets are impossible!  And I mean that quite literally -- there is a big quantitative difference between "difficult," which we get a lot of in 1/6, even with HT and such, and "outright can't be done."  The instruction sheet which you helpfully included is quite ironic actually because it probably reveals the big problem front and center -- the head on the instruction sheet is fully bald.  I think  the design flaw is that POP actually forgot to allow for the hair.  So what would have been a tight squeeze on a bald head, is an impossibility on the finished product.

Right now my Griffin Knight's helmet is in three pieces, that sort of hang on the head at least until I turn on the ceiling fan.  Dragon Knight is slightly better where I've got elastics compressing the hair, and the helmet isn't fully closed but you can barely tell.  I think the eventual solution might be to get two alternate heads, shaved bald, and hope the helmets fit then.  In almost every other way the figures are great (and you will enjoy the horses, no complaints there) but the helmets thing kind of swamps and overrides everything else, it's kind of an "Except for that Mrs Lincoln, how did you like the play?"