Kopf KF701: New Vulture Minifig with Buildable Wings Review

First previewed here!

Here are the official instructions courtesy of Brickset.

These are not the same as Kopf's. Kopf's Vulture has a different set or parts and it took me some time to MOC my way into it.

I'll update this post with the real Kopf instructions once it's out. For now, here's how I built mine:

This is the final product. I had 4 extra pieces that I managed to just place somewhere in the build. 

This is what the underside looks like.

2/4 of the extra pieces. I just moved the main backpack piece's parts up a bit to make room for these two pieces..

The main problem was getting the wing blades to fit in an angle. TLG's light green pieces that would make up the blades are round edged which would allow them to swivel around and look much better. Unfortunately, Kopf's light green pieces here are just flat, square edged pieces. When I compared the parts I received with the TLG instructions, I noticed that those light green studs and green connectors(?) (that piece where the light green stud is attached to) weren't in the official build, so I played around with them and made it work somehow. Admittedly it's fragile, but it was the best I could come up with last night that could be placed at a nice looking angle.

How the back looks.

The two lower blade wings are a bit above the upper wing because of the way they're attached. They don't ruin the overall look, but again it's much more fragile than what TLG designed.

Here you can see the middle wing being able to swivel. The bottom can't swivel upwards but can do so downwards at least. The upper cannot swivel at all.

So understandbly, the wings might have been very frustrating. Thankfully, the minifig itself is great!

Simple minifig, design from TLG.

Simple again, but still great prints. There are also wrinkles all around Vulture's head to further emphasize that he's an old man.

Overall, great minifig with a frustratingly difficult to build wings. I think though that getting the instructions directly from Kopf can help improve the building experience of this character.

As a trial, I'm thinking of revamping my reviewing process by creating a grading system. 

1 - Very poor

2 - Poor

3 - Average

4 - Good

5 - Very Good

These grades will be applied to 4 separate categories:

Print Quality - Focus on the quality of the printing on the minifig

Plastic Quality - Focus on the quality of the materials used in the minifig

Articulation/Building Experience - Focus on how loose/tight parts are and the difficulty connecting parts

Design Choice - Focus on uniqueness and faithfulness to the source (be it a minifig design or real design

(I was gonna add accessories as a category as well, but that might make it unfair to characters who don't really need accessories.)

I've been wanting to grade figs for a while now, but the inconsistencies and constant changes in standards have made it difficult. As such, I'll be experimenting on it and would love to hear your input regarding the best way to reviewing minifigs.

These are subject to change as I am just experimenting on how to improve reviewing minifigs and could also be scrapped altogether and instead review as how I see fit instead.

KF702 Grading:

Print Quality: 5/5

Prints on the minifig were great including the printed parts on the wings. Even tiny details such as wrinkles are seen well enough.

Plastic Quality: 5/5

The plastic did not feel cheap and did not have any excess plastic bits hanging around unlike other brands.

Articulation/Building Experience: 3/5

The minifig itself has no problems, though the wings were very frustrating to deal with. Additionally, it's fragile compared to TLG's design. I think we can bump up the grade from a 3 to 4 once Kopf releases the instructions as it will improve the building experience.

Design Choice: 2/5

Great design and great representation of the character, but we already have two official Vulture minifigs. This one seems to be a combination of both as it's the classic Vulture in a more modern suit. Still, I think new villain would've been better. This is more on TLG's decision though and not Kopf, but hey Kopf still produced it. Additionally, and given that it's been made officially, it's not a unique fig. TLG has one and XINH has one incoming (but the preview is already showing some wrong parts) as well.

Again, feel free to let me know how I should do these reviews! In the meantime, more reviews are incoming especially since AngeloMarcus Greenhills had a lot of new arrivals! Yay!

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