August 15, 2021

Poptoys 1/6 Ishida Mitsunari 石田三成

 

Quick biography of Ishida Mitsunari : Long story short, after the death of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, his vast empire was broken into 2 factions. One lead by Tokugawa Ieyasu and the other, by Ishida Mitsunari. They both met in a climatic decisive battle of Sekigahara with Mitsunari leading the "West Army" against Ieyasu's "East Army". Ieyasu came up to be the eventual winner.
Mitsunari was executed (beheaded) in Kyoto. Ending as predictable as such!
 
 
As far as my knowledge goes, this is the first actual historically known Samurai made by Poptoys. Before this, they made the 3 pcs Ashigaru, foot soldiers. And then the main characters from movie The Last Samurai. All were release as full action figure set with the armour fully gear up onto a 1/6 body. Except for Mitsunari which came with everything, including the headsculpt but except the body. The set also include all the extravagant backdrop accessories which includes :
1. a platform with straw mat, 2. a wooden screen, 3. armour storage box, 4. wooden armour stand, 5. 2x lamp stand, 6. flag stand, 7. 2x flag standard & 8. battle jacket (haori) stand. Note the War Fan (gunbai) in the pictures is from DiD Takeda Shingen set.
All these I really have no use for. If they can just release the figure set and have it cheaper, that will be my choice for purchase. Reality that there is no such choices available.


Spent about 2-3hrs setting up the entire figure and uses a Coomodel BD001 body - which is the recommended body model. Through the process, I can fully appreciate the delicately made armour pieces and also learned about the various layers. Challenging part is there isn't a clear instruction on how to put up the pieces on a 1/6 body but instead, the instructions shows how to display the armour on the stand.
Therefore there are some guess work along the way. Luckily most parts are just straight common sense, assisted with some of Poptoys's product picts online.
One thing to note for the helmet does not come with straps. But strap loops are present. I used leather strings to secure the helmet onto the head.
The end result is pretty amazing. I am satisfied.


Companies today that made Japanese Samurai figures are mainly Coomodel and Poptoys. ACI made a Takeda Shingen but seems no further announcement of characters. It will be an accurate guess that they have probably drop the genre.
By far, Coomodels has made Samurai series their main focal point now with a large amount of products released including "The 3 unifiers of Sengoku Japan" ie Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi & Tokugawa Ieyasu.
Poptoys has mainly devote to characters in "The Last Samurai", which has since released Algren, Katsumoto and Ujio. It is a surprise they made Mitsunari - which to me is also an important historical character. I feel it is a test water effort to gauge if more emphasis should be placed into this genre.

Poptoys's Mitsunari comparing to the Samurai I got from Coomodel - William Adams & Oda Nobunaga - comes up better in detail and craftsmanship. Both Coomodel's figures are earlier releases therefore not a straight out fair comparison. However you can see how quickly the toy making technology advances.
Coomodel's Sanada Yukimori (shall I call it ver 2.0?) is pre-ordered. When it arrives, there will be proper comparison.

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