SSTAR SX909: Various Iron Man Variants and Combiner Mech Build Review

A set I didn't even see online.

It's not a popular brand, and usually that means quality won't be great too, and we'll be looking into that.

First, let's see some box pictures.

This box actually includes two sets, meaning two of each unit.

These are the "units". I use the term units because using the term "figs" might confuse you since every set of 8 includes two of the same fig. For example, SX909-1 and SX909-2 are both Iron Patriot, and since there are two sets in the box above, there are 4 Iron Patriot figs in total.

The two sides of the box show Iron Man and Thanos.

Here are sample shots of boxes per unit.

Good enough box design, but the mech is pretty misleading as you'll see below.

I'll be adding these two pictures to our Iron Man minifig database since they're the two unique ones while the other two in the set already have a number of other variants.

Now for the mech review.

On picture it honestly looks great, but in terms of poseability, that's all it can handle. The arms can't move down any lower.

And it's because there's a protruding piece under the shoulder by the torso; though even without that piece on the torso, the arm design in general doesn't allow much articulation.

A view of the side.

A view of the back.

The extra parts you end up with after finishing the mech build. The guns and knives here aren't really TLG molds.

In terms of the quality of the parts, I'd say they rate at around poor, though maybe not very poor. They attach rather well, but the feel of the bricks and parts were just not pleasing. The gloss looked off and the bricks had some rough edges. Grip wise, they had no problems.

For the minifigs, it's kind of the same deal. Not so great quality with some weird decisions on the molds and prints. The only reason to get these are for the unique designs.

For the first Iron Man. It doesn't look like any of the marks from the movie, so it's either from the comics or their own design. I honestly like the design though, but the overall quality isn't great. For one, it's weird that they used a blue mold for the mask. I'm pretty sure they have a mold similar to that gold since they did for the mech.. or at least molded it the same color as the helmet and painted it gold. I cannot think of any reason to use blue mold, and it gets even weirder when we see the others below.

Surprisingly we get some arm prints though and they're not bad.

The back has no prints and it's the same for all the others. My other red one does have some gold smudging on it that might be easily erasable anyway.

Some people refer to this as one of the stealth suits, but I'm not sure if it's confirmed to be based on anything real. For now though, I will refer to it as a stealth suit since it does look stealthy at least. First to talk about: the helmet. The helmet looks off again because initially you'd think that it doesn't have eye prints but in reality it does but in white with no outline making it barely visible. Another issue about it is that there's no chin print, but at least it's not an out of place color like blue in the red suit above. Generally though good prints for the torso, even though the plastic isn't great.

More side prints that are actually good.

Now for Midas that also has that weird blue chin. Why? The hehlmet has the yellow mold, so why not use that same plastic right? This one also has eye outlines that actually fit well, so it's weird that they didn't have this on the stealth suit.

Iron Patriot is another weird case when it comes to the helmet because as we already know, the masks are made from blue molds, so why didn't they just use the blue masks for him and instead give him an all grey front mask..

More weirdness. Look at Iron Patriot's mask: it's using the golden mold.. I find these really weird decisions that I almost feel bad for the wasted effort and machine time on these figs. Hopefully they figure it out and make better figs too.

In terms of the brand, I admire SSTAR for at least putting out some unique designs. We've seen enough companies just copy the bigger clones and it's a nice thing that SSTAR is doing these. I suspect that only half the figs are unique since they're testing the demand for these unique designs; I mean if you look at it in a certain way, you know that Midas and Iron Patriot are good designs because the bigger companies are doing them hence they see it as a safer choice to just copy. Hopefully they realize that that's not the way to go and that they should have more initiative into designing their own designs more!

Quite possibly SSTAR is the same or at least related to the Little Star brand that released 6 Iron Man figs with mechs some months/years back. There's a picture in a preview here, and one of the marks there is practically identical to the one here. From what I've heard too, the Little Star Iron Man figs didn't come with back prints too. I'm still hoping to get my hands on those Little Star Iron Man figs, but since they're not canon, I'm not really desparate.

EDIT:



A lot of people have been messaging me for instructions so there they are! 

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