James Cameron’s Avatar RDA Scorpion Gunship
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Gunship
Its difficult for me to fairly say what this toy is like in some aspects, as i bought it to collect & nothing more. Saying that, it is very good, well made,good detail & looks pretty durable.
I would recommend it though as it is very close to the ship in the film & really ought to be enjoyed simply for that!
5 Stars The ONE gem from the AVATAR collection
Why I am qualified to speak: I have been collecting action figures since the first Star Wars figures back in the 1970s. I have thousands of 1:18 action figures (literally THOUSANDS) and hundreds of vehicles that go with them.
I Paid $14.99 for this ship (movie pre-release sale at K-mart) and feel that it was the perfect price for this item. I see that they are now $24.99 to $29.99 at various stores and that price is way over the value mark. Watch this item for sell-out, though, as it is the best AVATAR product currently on the shelves.
It appears that this vehicle is released in the same quantities as the flying creatures and other vehicles as they all had equal representation on the shelves at 8 different stores I visited.
THE GOOD:
-The olive drab color is perfect. There is a very, very subtle gold dust in the paint that is nice if the model is touched by the sun.
-The cockpit has very nice plastic “glass” and has an interior section that folds up and out to make it easier to get figures inside. The effect is imagination inspiring.
-Assembly was fun. It kind of reminded me of an elementary snap-together model kit at first. Additionally, once it is together it stays together.
-The over-all structural appearance is awesome. This is one of my all-time favorite vehicles… based on appearance alone.
-The Cockpit hinge is made to snap on and off easily to avoid breaking if torqued.
-The guns on the front wing rotate 360 degrees.
-I like the fact that this ship has no springs inside and that it doesn’t shoot any funky colored missiles. (But I would have liked to have had individual missiles that separate from the wing)
THE BAD:
PARTS and ASSEMBLY (the bad):
The front “wings” where the machine guns are attached require adult strength and child fingers to easily assemble. I was afraid that if I held them at the outer edges while pushing I ran the risk of bending them and getting a crease where the plastic would be lighter than the surrounding areas. With a little work and focus I was able to get them installed while maintaining a solid grip on the larger gun and the top of the wing at its base.
Those same front wings each have 2 stubs that protrude INTO the cockpit area. So long as the cockpit is closed you won’t care, but those nubs detract from an open cockpit experience.
The tail assembly and the snap-on wings are a different type of plastic than the body of the ship. Bright light passes through the softer plastic and it is much more flexible than the rest of the ship. The color is also not perfectly matched up and a close inspection makes it easy to see where one begins and the other ends. It is too early to tell but I would expect discoloration differences over time to make the parts stand apart even more.
SCALE (the bad):
-The seat inside the cockpit is too small and is almost not even there. It is molded into the rear wall of the cockpit and serves to do little more than hold the hips of a sufficiently small pilot.
-I wish all the various companies would settle on a standard 1:18 scale for their figures and then honor that scale with acute attention to detail. This ship is too small for most 1:18 action figures. If you really bend and crunch a standard GI Joe figure (with no gear) you can squeeze him inside. Neytiri just barely fits inside if you squish up her legs enough (a problem with Neytiri’s scale more than the ship’s) [*EDIT* meaning that Neytiri is too small and should not be able to squeeze in there... but this point is included to give an approximation of how big the ship is for people who are not up to speed on the size of other action figures]. GI Joe’s Scarlett in Reactive Impact Armor (See Desert Ambush Shana “Scarlett” O’Hara) fits snugly, in a proper seated position, with her feet under the fold-up dash and her head squarely under the cockpit hinge IF you swivel her holster up onto her lap.
PAINT (the bad):
-With the exception of the white, yellow and black used for 6 TEXT areas of the ship (2 No Step and 4 missile designations) the only other color on the ship is gold on the end of some missile tubes and a hint of red that I think is supposed to be a follow light for night ops (a little red, see-through plastic “light” would have been much nicer). I’m not a big fan of weathering for paint jobs, but they could have easily increased the aesthetics by simply doing a black wash to bring out the molded line details (like the vents and plating joints).
-The rockets that are painted gold are not individually painted. Instead, they painted the entire face of the assembly gold, to include the rockets and plating behind the rockets.
ARTICULATION (the bad):
- The twin rotors on each side spin and the entire assembly pivots just as it does in the movie… with 8 clicked-position increments but it is already wearing out so it is becoming free moving, but still tight enough that it holds its position.
-The nose sensor is not articulated.
ACCESSORIES (the bad):
- Missiles do not detach and there are no accessories.
CONCLUSION:
I Love this ship. If it were to scale with GI Joe and Star Wars I would have bought 6 of them. Since it is too small I’ll just have to settle on two of them (for Scarlett and Cover Girl). I will apply my own black wash and add a few high quality bitz to spice it up. It was a great value at $15. I can see spending $20. It is over priced at $30 but I bet it will sell anyway. If this is still around when clearance hits, snap it up if it gets anywhere near $15. Less than that and it is a steal.
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