Duende or: It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

So my Duende arrived today, and after all of the hobby drama we've been seeing for the last week regarding this release, I was really nervous that I'd get a bad one. Fortunately, that was mostly not the case!



I'll admit I'm not as bothered as some about the quality issues with this run, as I'm not very picky. I'll also admit the title of this post is something I thought up back when we only had one photo of one plastic Duende to judge against the resin, and now that more plastic Duendes are showing up in the wild, some of the quality concerns are definitely valid. All the same, I don't think this release is the disaster many people are saying it is - I'd say the Imperador sculpt fared far worse in the molding process than Duende did. I'm basically using Imperador as the standard to judge all the recent new sculpts against, as the biggest screwup in recent memory, and I don't think Duende is nearly as bad. He's not so small as to almost be mistaken for a Classic, for starters, and Imperador has the unfortunate problem of looking like he was sculpted in Sculpey and then someone stepped on it before it was baked. Duende does look somewhat narrow in comparison to the resin, but he could honestly be a lot worse.

With regards to the squished sculpts, it does beg the question of why the new Eberl sculpts seem to translate flawlessly into plastic, yet sculpts by other artists are hit-and-miss. Food for thought.

My Duende isn't great, but he isn't horrible either. I was hoping I'd get a darker one, which I did. I really do like his paint job, and I think he looks like a masterpiece compared to unfortunate previous attempts like Wyatt and Nympheas. I never expected the plastic models to look exactly like the resin preview (and Breyer has a long history of using the resin versions of new sculpts to stand in for the plastic ones until they're ready for prime time, which I don't have a problem with).

Above is a photo of the prominent chest seam on the model, which seems to be common. Things like this are difficult to excuse. This is a brand-new sculpt, and as such they should really be doing a better job of sanding down the seams. This is very similar to the seam issues on Zion's nether regions a couple of months ago. Was the seam-sanding team asleep at the wheel again?

His head and forelock are mostly okay, though I wish the mane were more pearly. There's also the unfortunate issue of overspray on the mane covering up the areas of the shoulder visible between the strands of the mane. Why even bother with those kinds of details if you aren't going to go to the trouble of painting them correctly? Like the mane braids on the Iberian version of the Gypsy Vanner sculpt.

Aside from the chest seam and shoulder overspray, this model does have those black specks scattered across small areas of his body, but I'm more forgiving of those because they're tiny and I don't expect a QC inspector to look at every model with a magnifying glass. I do really like the mold from the above angle, though, and I love that his tail is pearly! I just wish his mane had been pearly to match.

All in all, this is hardly the first time Breyer has mucked up a brand-new sculpt in the Premier Club, and it probably won't be the last. The question I'm asking, though, is whether Breyer has been taking on more projects than they can handle lately. We never got an explanation for why Duende's release was delayed a month, and there have been numerous other production delays this year as well. Maybe it's time for Breyer to expand their staff a bit - or, if they can't do that, cut back on their offerings (sad as that would be). Let's hope they take something into consideration, because it could really come back to haunt them if they don't.