Friday, July 3, 2015

Cthulhu Fhtagn! Diamond Select Edition.

I was pleasantly surprised last year by the announcement of a vinyl Cthulhu Idol bank from Diamond Select. The pre-orders for the piece are now shipping, and Raven was kind enough to send over a review after receiving his copy.



"Well, I'm happy! Squint a bit, and this could be a pulp magazine cover illo (see my render above)! At eight inches tall, this vinyl sculpture of Cthulhu differs from Inspector Legrasse's copy (seized as evidence from atop a wooden post at that depraved cult's campsite in a Louisiana swamp) only in being full-colored -- green-and-black, with yellowing aged claws, hunkered down on a gray stone slab inscribed with unknown lettering -- where Legrasse's copy is uncolored stone.

There is the option to spray-paint this with gray "stone-textured" paint from a craft store, but I think I'll keep mine as is; the coloring was nicely done. Also, I could tape over, then paint over, the inconspicuous coin slot on the back, but who knows? I might let Great Cthulhu start guarding my coins someday. The vinyl is thick enough to give the statuette comfortable heft and durability during a hand-to-hand battle with cultists (in either sense of "with"), and would surely survive many years atop a wooden post at your favorite campsite... though perhaps not with coins in it there.

Bravo to Eli Livingston, who clearly sculpted this for the trufans, and to Diamond for following through with the manufacturing and paintjob quality.

5 comments:

Rob said...

I snagged one of these at the local comic / game store, it is now perched over my desk at work. It was fun watching the eyes of a fellow HPL fan at work widen as he noticed it on my shelf.

I'm happy with the design, although it seems as if there is a minor manufacturing defect - the bottom is slightly warped. The guy at the store said both of them that they got in had that issue, so it's not unique to the one I have.

Oneiros said...

Oddly enough, I walked into my local comic book shop today and found one.

Anonymous said...

I got mine yesterday; it had one small problem with it---the plug on the bottom didn't want to come off. It looked like, maybe, the paint on the rim of the hole fused with the paint on the edge of the plug. In any case, my husband had to use significant force to open it, which broke the cross-piece for finger-gripping.

This made me sad.

Propnomicon said...

@ Rob

That's probably a casting defect. Try hitting it with a heat gun to gently warm the vinyl and see if it snaps back into position.

@ Anonymous

It sounds as if there are multiple issues with the bottom of the bank.

Ryan said...

Looking forward to getting mine in a day or two. Wish it would come wrapped like the Maltese Falcon did in...The Maltese Falcon. Newspaper, twine, and old dirty cloth.

As I'm fairly unfamiliar with vinyl, would spray painting definitely be the way to go with painting this thing? Would I need to prime or just get paint specifically meant for plastics?