Illumination is here!

Good news, everyone! My Illumination model arrived shockingly quickly after they popped up online, but due to our move, I just haven't had the time to write about him until now. Fortunately, I managed to scrape up a few minutes to take him out of his box and admire him, and boy am I glad I did! Behold!



As an aside - while I love the Nokota mold, I don't love how his head is closer to the camera than the rest of his body, which almost always makes his head look huge in photos. Maybe I'm just doing it wrong.

Anyway, look at how pretty he is! He's all shiny and blue, and I love it!

I've seen a lot of posts on Facebook wondering about that square seam-looking thing around his shoulders. So far, it seems like they all have it - I'm guessing the non-clearware models have it too, but this is the first time we've been able to see it.



Quality-wise, he's pretty nice, but there really wasn't much to screw up on this model, except maybe the fireworks (and I didn't see anything wrong with those). I feel like his eyes could have been painted less sloppily, though. And I love the transition to clear on the ends of his mane and tail.



It's always interesting to get a new mold in clearware and see its "inner workings" for the first time. That's a peg inside the model! They snap together to help hold the two halves of the model together. It's supposed to help prevent seam splits, but the jury's still out on that one, I think. The pegs are also notorious for being creaky, so if you have an especially chatty Nokota (or Esprit, or numerous other molds with pegs), blame the pegs.

Since this is the first time we've seen the Nokota in clearware, and the run was only 3000 (or 3500, there seems to be some disagreement) models, I wonder if we'll see other clearware Nokotas in the future? Only time will tell, I suppose.

That's all I have for today. Enjoy what's left of April - hopefully we get some exciting Breyerfest news tomorrow!