I glanced at the comments on his video and was surprised to see most of the people pushing back because Black Series collectors are content with what they got and aware that they're not getting it anywhere else. Which I'd agree isn't necessarily A positive, but this is what we get.
Like I said, his criticism seems to fundamentally misunderstand what Black Series is.
I don't think it was EVER the most hyper-articulated line and it's never prioritized articulation. It's way more a line about giving you figures that can mostly do what you would -generally- want that character to do on a shelf. The only real failing I think they have in that regard is how many Jedi/Sith can't hold sabers two-handed.
I mean, I'm the kind of collector that loves -more- articulation and more posing potential. But I don't think that's representative of the majority of Black Series collectors that will museum pose their figures until the end of time. Or even many of the toy photographers that mostly want to hit 'typical' poses for the character.
Also, his complaint about single joints 'only' getting 90 degrees-ish (I think Luke actually gets slightly better than 90) ignores that plenty of double-joints only get 90 degrees.
I also think his whole 'double knees look better' thing is subjective. He looks at how the knee overlaps on a single joint and says it looks bad. Some people look at all the exposed joints when you use a double knee and say THAT looks bad. It's not an objective 'this is better than that' situation except in terms of ROM. Which many people don't care about - especially in the knees since you'll almost NEVER use more than 90 degrees of movement at the knees for 90% of the characters you buy figures of. Especially in Star Wars.
I actually watched it last night as well, and I agree- not totally off the mark ("from a certain point of view"). It just always amuses me that all these ex-employees of big companies- Bobby Vala, Scott Neitlich, etc. love to overstate how important they were to their respective companies. Don't get me wrong- I'm sure they were to an extent, but there comes a point when you gotta stop milking the cow.
Bob was not important at Hasbro, first of all. WAY less important than Scott was. And everyone knows how I feel about Scott and how much it pains me to admit that.
Also, at least Scott is apparently like.. an unemployed McDonalds worker or something now. I don't care if he bags on toy companies all day long. He's just some fuckin' dumb guy. With Bob, it feels way more inappropriate for him to make these videos criticizing other lines because he is operating a toy company, and he's almost always talking about his old bosses, basically.
That's a double-whammy of feeling like what he's doing is kind of gross. Can you imagine if some dude from Hasbro was 'reviewing' Valaverse, BBWS, Mattel, and Jada figures? How would that LOOK? Ya' know?
