I'm still waiting for Spock, but Kirk and two additional heads have arrived, so I have enough to at least give some initial in-hand impressions.
While I ordered Spock immediately after the tweaks were finally done to the portrait, I'd held off on Kirk after seeing the promo shots, and had planned to wait until I got Spock in hand. However I went ahead and bit the bullet when it looked like they were going to sell out. And I'm glad I did. Overall I think these are a great representation of figures that you will not likely see produced at this level, at least by HT, EB or Sideshow. The Spock head sculpt is phenomenal, and I'd rate a solid 9/10. Kirk is pretty good as well. Better in hand than in any of the photos I've seen, even the promo shots. Still I would rate the likeness around a 7.75/10. It's certainly not one that you look at and see a miniature Chris Pine. It's more of a "ummm yeah... I see it". But it is a highly detailed sculpt and a good paint job, so with the uniform, it's Captain Kirk. I am sure there are some tweaks that could have been made to eek the likeness up a bit, which I would have welcomed, but Pine seems to be one of those wonky difficult likenesses to nail. Probably as tough as Shatner. One quick note about the paint job. While Iminime's paints are outstanding, I think the skin tones on these are too tan. I have zero plans of having them repainted, I would just wonder how others feel, or maybe it's just me.
The bodies (Kirk at least) are serviceable enough I suppose but they look too bulky and they are kind of stiff. I'm not sure which bodies are used, I'm sure it's somewhere up in the description, but I'm definitely going to be trying the TT-22 body swap. However one thing I think many folks aren't realizing is that there aren't many inexpensive slim/narrow body choices out there, at least that I know of. There would have been quite a bit of push back if these were $50 more to reflect the higher price for a TT body. Some if not most folks will probably be perfectly fine with them out of the box. The black undershirt might be adding to the illusion of bulk, but it is screen accurate. I'll bet if Iminime had gone with a dickey there would have been a contingent who would have called it cheap and not screen accurate, so I think they made the safer choice here. So the body swap it really just my own aftermarket decision.
Regarding the uniform, I'm not enough of an expert to go into the accuracy of the braids, etc. I had expected to be put off by the lack of the starfleet pattern but it's not terribly noticeable. Would I have preferred it, sure, but I would imagine it would necessitate a custom fabric that would have been a budget buster. I might pick up one or two of the playmates figure uniforms to use for the spare heads but the tailoring on those looks pretty cheap and the pattern is way out of scale.
Accessories. Personally I'm not a fan of the belt and don't plan to display them as such. 90% of the movie they are in their standard issues. I'll probably have Kirk holding a phaser and Spock holding a tricorder and everything else will go back in the box.
There have been times that I've talked myself out of something only to regret it later and have to go chase it down. I pretty sure that would have been the case with Kirk. So thus far the bottom line on the figures is that if you like the movie you'll probably really like the figures either out of the box or with a body swap. Unfortunately, I have my concerns about seeing more of the crew join the captain and first officer which is a real shame. I would absolutely love to have (in order) Uhura, Bones, Scotty, Sulu, Chekov, Carol Marcus and Khan. Even if Iminime could do the crewmates as H+C and let us scramble around for bodies, that would be completely fine with me. Otherwise, hopefully someone will start commissioning the other uniforms and heads so the crew can continue to come together.
