Tomopop Review: SOTA Toys' Cammy statues

6:00 PM on 03.09.2010   |   Brian Szabelski

Most of you know that I love Street Fighter's Cammy. The rest of you ... well, you'll probably learn it if you just look through my post history or ask anyone who's been around Tomopop for more than a week. I have a small, yet constantly growing collection of Cammy figures, the latest of which were SOTA Toys' new Cammy resin statues. Not only becoming the biggest Cammy figures I own, these two are the most expensive at $90 each. So when they arrived in the mail one day from SOTA, I was very excited and happy to have them, and even more excited to eventually get to review them.

But for any of you expecting me to go light because of my Cammy love ... that's silly. If anything, it made me look closer to really see if both were up to the quality of what a Cammy figure ought to be. What I found wasn't what I expected. But the question is: is that good or bad?

Follow me over the jump and see how SOTA's resin figures stacked up.

So here are your boxes for the Cammy twins. Similar packaging, tweaked for each of the figures, of course, that pretty prominently displays what you're getting inside without having a windowed front. I'm guessing that's because a windowed front gives an opportunity for the contents inside to be accidentally smashed or something, and being resin, these aren't exactly things that should be tossed around or displayed in precarious places.

Now, here's the illustrations by Udon that went on the side of the box. First, Shadowloo/Killer Bee Cammy ...

And then Delta Red Cammy. Keep these referenced. I'll explain in a little bit.

Freed from their boxes and a cocoon of Styrofoam and tape, the two figures stand about a foot tall. That's a whole lot of leg to look at. The first noticeable thing out of the box is that SOTA has nailed the look of the Delta Red and Killer Bee costumes perfectly. There's nothing missing from the body designs of either character. Even some of the smaller details, like the design of Cammy's gauntlets in each version, is exactly how it should be to the smallest little bolt.

They've even gone so far as to sculpt the braids with individual strands of hair in them to add just that tiny extra bit of detail. It's an effort that doesn't go unappreciated by this fan.

The paint work pretty much follows the figure's lines, with a tiny bit here and there falling outside the lines like on this gauntlet for Killer Bee Cammy, but it's so small and unnoticeable that it doesn't hurt the quality of the figure. I can't really complain about that when I see the rest of the detail on this figure, after all.

And yes, that means a healthy dose of booty, too. Rawr.

Both statues feature bases that can be "locked" together to create one larger piece, and I say "locked" because they don't actually lock together. Instead, they both fit together loosely, which makes them easy to separate, but you always have to handle them as two separate pieces when, say, you're trying to move them or carry them outside for a photoshoot. For the most part, though, this won't be a problem for the average collector.

The bases themselves are pretty basic. Both statues are held in place via two posts on the base, each specific to that individual piece, and when lined up properly, they slide in pretty easily. Even if they're not an exact fit, the posts are a bit pliable, so you can adjust them to fit Cammy quite well, but they do seem like they could snap, so please be careful if you try and do that. In fact, I'd recommend double-checking to make sure you're not just missing the holes on the bottom of the statues before you do anything that drastic, because you probably won't need to. Well, that and because these are fragile pieces.

On the bottom of each base, you'll find the info for that figure, as well as the limited edition numbering information. Everything's printed very clearly, so there's no guesswork to figure out if you've got number 127 or number 172.

And now let's take a look at those beautiful-

Ummmmm, faces?

Here's where we run into our first and probably biggest problem. SOTA's done a good job crafting details on the bodies of these lovely ladies and making sure the two resin pieces mesh together when displayed as one piece, but their faces sorely could have used some more work. In this light, Killer Bee Cammy's face does look better than how it did when I opened her up inside, but you can still see those eyes with those huge, huge pupils. She looks a bit ... alien. That, or bored. 

Delta Red Cammy suffers from the same problem a bit, too, as well as having a droopy beret. When viewed from the wrong angle, what you see above is what you get, butit's not so bad because turn her to a slightly different angle and ...

That's much better, isn't it? In fact, if you even turn her a bit more ...

The problem just kind of fades away entirely, like when you view her from the side here. Of course, now you also see that her painted-on scar kinda cuts off and doesn't go further down her cheek like it should. But that's a problem I've seen on a number of Cammy figures, so it's not SOTA's alone.

Like Delta Red Cammy, Killer Bee Cammy looks better when viewed from an angle, but there's still the problem that it kind of feels off, almost perhaps like her face is stretched a bit.

Remember before when I said to keep those box art pictures referenced? Well, now I guess you see why: had these pieces resembled those illustrations, I wouldn't be so wishy-washy on these figures right now. The poses aren't bad and the quality of these resin pieces are pretty good, but its the little details that are keeping me from being able to whole-heartedly recommend these to everyone out there. And a big part of that is because their faces do look off, specifically in the case of Killer Bee Cammy, whose face looks scrunched and whose stare looks a bit alien when viewed head-on. The easiest way to not deal with that issue, though, is to pose them at an angle, because the two resin statues do look much better when not viewed head-on, as you can see above. But still ...if I could get a Delta Red Cammy looking as cute as she did in that illustration on the box, I'd be a very happy collector.

Yes, there are better Cammy figures and statues out there. But ... there's a bit of a catch. The only Delta Red Cammy statue I like better than SOTA's, the bigger Pop Culture Shock Cammy, is a whopping US$249, more than $60 higher in price than these two combined. If you wanted the matching (and sold-out) Shadowloo/Killer Bee Cammy from Pop Culture Shock ... well, that's at least another $249 if you can find one. So, for the price, these two figures are pretty reasonable, and the Delta Red version certainly is a good use of $90.

With Killer Bee Cammy, though, it's not a bad figure, but Yamato's figure for roughly the same price (or slightly a little more, depending on where you shop) gives you a better pose, a better sculpt and a bit more detail than what SOTA has cooked up. And you don't have to deal with the whole eye thing either. However, if you're a collector like I am and it wouldn't feel complete without having both SOTA figures, their Killer Bee Cammy is an okay addition and far better than many of the cheaper figures out there. Just don't expect perfection.