General Custer has arrived!

Got a picture of General Custer in the box to share with you all as he arrived today!

Right, why did You have to do that? Now I need to go order the damned thing...

I had to cancel him but he looks great! Is this the exclusive?
I also have the exact same type of sword he comes packaged with. Now I have to buy him!

No this is not the exclusive. SideshowToy has not even sent out the exclusive to me yet and when they finally get around to shipping it out, it will take an addional 7-10 days to get to me as I live on the east coast.

This is the regular version that I ordered from www.goodstufftogo.net

The exclusive, is suppose to come with an addional pistol.

The only thing that I am slightly disappointed in is that he comes with the lower 1872 type boots instead of the higher cavary type shown on the prototype.

My exclusive should be here on Monday!

I'm just glad that Tom asked me to help with reference. They used my Custer uniform as a basis to work from. I sent them as much reference as I had and from what Dan says, it looks like it helped.

I'm very excited about this one.

I am working on an officers horse rig and will be really detailing the horse out. Real leather on all the rigging, real working buckles, metal horse shoes, the works!!!!

The exclusive pistol is one of Custer's engraved presentation Navy's I believe. The sword doesn't happen to be engraved does it? Custer retained an oversized Confederate cavalry officer's straight-bladed, double-edged sword whose owner he had killed in a running fight. The blade on this weapon was engraved 'No me saques sin raison; No me enbaines sine honor' ('Draw me not without cause; sheathe me not without honor'). It had a German 'Solingen' marked blade.

Son of the Morning Star" (Evan S. Connell, 1984, p.111) describes Custer's fight with a Confederate officer during the Civil War. Apparantly he killed the officer and took his "unusual double edged sword-its blade engraved in Spanish 'no me saques sin razon- no me envaines sin honor'. " It is noted that the eminent Custer historian Lawrence Frost examined the sword with a jewelers loop, presuming this to be a Toledo blade and looking for markings. He found instead Solingen marking in nearly obliterated letters near the hilt.
It says that the blade was 3" longer than the standard cavalry saber (which was 36" long) suggesting this would have had to be 39" long!!

I ordered several sets of custom leather boots and I have kept a pair just hoping SS would do this figure!

Andy

You should be stoked. Having been involved at the grass roots is thrilling. I'm thrilled and in awe. Great post WestBatman.

I couldn't tell you on the sword as I ordered an exclusive and a regular version, and want to keep one boxed up. However, until I see what the exclusive looks like, I do not know which one I will be displaying and so I have not opened it up.

I can tell you that the face painting looks to be a great deal better than on the Little Bighorn Custer and I like the hair a great deal more on this one as it is more shiny as if he had oil in it.

I ordered the 3 pair of the custom 1872 boots from the same person that you got the longer Civil War boots from. However, I really liked the mold that Sideshow did for the longer cavalry boots and so I did not get any custom CW boots made up. It is a shame that they did not include that set of molded boots in place of the 1872 ones. I will have to try to pick up a few sets at a parts store I guess. Hopefully, the exclusive comes with the longer molded CW boots, but I doubt it. It would have been a perfect figure as is with the boots and the first in the Civil War personality line as every figure had one thing or anther wrong with the uniform.

The pants on Custer, you might notice are a different color of blue than the coat. I'm not sure on this as all I have to go by is the black and white photos. Speaking of photos, they used my least favorite Civil War picture of Custer for the box. The other more famous picture should have been used as it had the same uniform that was used for the figure. I was sure they were going to use it as they had that picture on display in some of the ads for Custer.



Perhaps Sideshow could not get the rights by the owner of the original to use Custer's most famous picture for the box art.

Looks like an excellent figure! Thanks for sharing!

Got Custer yesterday and he had the dreaded twisty under the clothes. And the tie was sewn to the shirt. I probably wouldn't have disturbed the tie but I had to get that twisty off. Otherwise I really like him, excellent outfit and lots of accessories.

Any suggestions for getting the sword to hang right though?

glad you liked him dstephen.

I haven't decided yet on if I am going to use the excellent Sideshow head sculpt or my custom resin drastic plastic head sculpt with the beard sanded off.

my modified for Civil War drastic plastic resin head:



original bearded resin head sculpt for drastic plastic prototype Custer:

I have the drastic Custer and like him a lot, but I think the SSC sculpt is just as good if not a bit better.

dstephen,

Perhaps you could clarify something for me on the CW Custer.

I have not opened mine regular version and I've decided that I'm going to keep that one boxed and open the exclusive when it comes later this week.

I was checking out the monkey depot picture of the Custer figure and something looks strange on this picture:



The neck and how it connects to the body does not look like any of the other Civil war figures I have. On those figures the end of the neck connects to a visible from shoulder level base. This Custer's neck looks like it goes down into the body. Also the neck looks like it has the figure body unpainted look to it (neck is shiny like arms and not dull paint like head sculpt). Is the neck part of the head sculpt or is it seperated from the head? I have never seen this type of body arrangement before on a sideshow figure. It almost looks like the neck is part of the body and the head disconnects from the top of the neck.

Is this some sort of new body and head type from Sideshow? Is the Custer figure what I have heard some people refer to as rotocast where the head sculpt is hollow and not solid as on all the other Civil War figures? If it is, then it may be most detailed of the hollow head sculpts I have seen. However, I hope it is not as I am quite fond of the solid head sculpts by Sideshow.

He's an excellent figure, no squishy head look. Sculpt for the face is excellent and the outfit is nicely detailed, particularly likeable is his belt buckle and exclusive iron pistol with detailing and metal simulated handle. The paint ops were fairly good, but it does have what looks like mud spots on his face, but he is very pale in person and I wonder if it's because he had facial nevi? Hard to tell from the cover photograph.

Custer was pale complected and would sun burn easily.

I very much like the face painting of the new custer much better than on the western custer by Sideshow. Comparing the two, the Civil War Custer has a much more natural skin tone.

The head is made different on this figure than all of my other figures. The head detaches from bottom of the face and the neck is part of the body and is made out of the same type of plastic as the body with no painting over top of it to match his face. This does not matter on this particular figure as the shirt and scarf completly hide his neck from view. However, this would NOT be a good figure to use for something else other than Custer in his civil war uniform.

I am curious if anyone knows if Sideshow is making all of their new figures like this. On any figure where the neck was fully exposed this would not look good at all as the neck is quite long and is a completly different color and a great deal shinier than the face painting. This would not be a good move for Sideshow to go for all of their 1/6th line especially on star wars type figures where the neck is tottally exposed.

I commend your illustration WestDan76. There have been examples in the past where Sideshow (or another), have decided to either partially or completely painted the body of a figure. There should be more focus on what comes out at the end of the line to collectors, as to what their desires, in fact, are. Surely it must be desired to have the figures face resemble the complexion of the body. Just that little bit of extra effort to complete and compliment the end figure.

For anyone interested and has all of the figures, the extra set of tall cavalry boots that comes with Sherman is the set that should be used on Custer in place of the ones he has on. I have put the new boots on him and it really brings out the figure to a new level.

On the posting concerning the neck, there is a tremendous loss of detail when going to the new neck design. In the old figures where the neck was part of the head sculpt, additional sculpted neck detail could be implemented such as facial hair, adam's apple and the shape of neck. This new design has nothing, it just looks like a tube connecting the head to the body. I do not like the new design at all regardless if the neck can be seen or not. I hope Sideshow never again releases a figure with a generic tube neck.

When I first bought this Civil war custer and was looking at him in the box, I thought it was the same head sculpt as the little bighorn western figure except for the longer hair in the back. However, after having both figures side by side on display, I must state that they are two completly different head sculpts by Matt Falls. The forehead, nose, cheekbones mushtash are all different. I think Matt must have started from scratch again when he did this one instead of making altertions on the original. With that in mind, I must state that the Civil War version of Custer is without a doubt Matt Falls best by far likeness to the real Custer. When I look at it I can see Custer in every detail of the face. With the Little Big Horn one I can only state that it bears a passing resemblance to Custer but not exact. The Civil war one is in fact an exact likeness to the general in every detail. With the practice of doing the first one, Matt must have been able to fix some of the things that went wrong on the first one and the result is amazing! Actually, now that I look at it, I thing the finished product looks more like Custer than did the prototype for the Civil War Custer head sculpt offered in the ads on the site.

Just my two cents worth on "Audie". The figure is really good, however their is one rather large problem. Where are the taller cavary boots?Even the description on the box lists the tall cavalry boots encluded. Believe me taller boots makes a big difference as well as making him more historicaly correct. Please respond Side Show. Attepting to find the taller boots on line, has made them:bliss :bliss as rare as hens teeth.

Thanks,
Brent:bliss

As I've stated on another board, it would seem that Custer and Sherman are a good package deal since General Sherman comes with an extra pair of long cavalry boot of which the real Sherman most likely never used. He was most often seen in photos with low quarter shoes on.

However, Cuser always wore the longer cavalry boots during the Civil War. He did not start wearing these one until the western little Bighorn era. If you can pick up a General Sherman cheap on ebay, you will have the extra set of boots. Of course if you are from the south or from Atlanta where General Sherman is not very well liked, this may not be an option for you to consider.

I doubt if Sideshow could do anything about this at this point. Since most likely the entire run of production on Custer is over and all of the boots would be wrong on every single figure.

The neck being seperate from the head has been used before on SSC figures, but I don't think it will be the norm. They may have used it on Custer because his uniform completely covers his neck. This head/neck design is actually preferred by many collectors because it gives you more movement for the head. But I can see that it compromises the sculptural integrity. I'd expect that they'll only use this design where the neck will be completely covered.