Wave 3 ARF

As usual, new product means more of my tacky reviews.
With this review, I’ll be giving a brief run through of the new printed ARF helmets. (sans the Shadow ARF, I didn’t receive that one yet.)

Left to Right: Trauma HelmetGeonosis Camo Boil Helmet /Geonosis Waxer Helmet

And here are a few shots at different angles. I apologize for some of the photos. Although to be honest, there’s not really much to see on the back of the helmets.

Alright so here are my personal thoughts on the helmets:

Trauma Helmet:

Trauma seems to be quite popular, not exactly sure why; but he has a nicely designed helmet and Arealight definitely captured that. Incidentally, I received two of these; one has crisper printing and the other doesn’t; both of them are a bit lighter above the nose area of the helmet though. The helmet has green print for the design, although I personally would have preferred it to be sand green to match with the new clone trooper battle pack. I feel it would have made it a bit easier for people to make their own “custom Trauma”.  All in all though, it’s a great helmet. I personally like the design of the ARF trooper helmets, so it’s a bit biased; but I could suggest getting this helmet if you’re a fan of the character/design of the helmet.

Boil Helmet:

Alright, now I’m usually not a big fan of camo; but I actually do like this helmet and the Waxer one. They both look great. The Boil helmet has a few inaccuracies: it’s missing the little face on the side and according to Arealight, a yellow triangle up top. I personally couldn’t see the triangle in any references I found though. The helmet sports a brown camo printed on a tan ARF helmet: something many people requested if I recall correctly. Although, as with the previous Camo ARF helmet, it lacks printing in a triangular area on the back. This is due to the printer capabilities, and isn’t really that big of a deal in my opinion. The rest of the helmet honestly makes up for it.  I can easily recommend this helmet or the Waxer helmet.

Waxer Helmet:

As I said before, I’m not a big fan of Camo or brown or tan; but for some odd reason, I really love this helmet. It sports a thick yellow stripe down the top and brown camo printed onto a tan helmet. As usual, arealight did a good job matching the reference, except he missed the small face on the side; but it’s no big deal. I feel it actually looks a bit better without the face on the side. Like the other camo arf helmets though, it lacks printing on the back. I can easily say that this was my favorite ARF helmet out of this round. I would definitely recommend getting this helmet.

Summary:
All in all, these are great helmets. The printing on them is very crisp, sans that single spot above the nose on the Trauma helmet. I can easily recommend picking up these helmets, especially the Waxer helmet.

As a side note: if you’re wondering about torsos for the tan helmets and you’re a bit strapped for money : Brickforge’s Decals work well if you don’t have the option of printing your own decals. The decal on the torso of the waxer helmet is put over a Kingdom’s Torso.

I hope this helps with your purchase.

-Apples

New ARF Helmet Prints

Alright, so today I’ll be reviewing the ARF trooper helmets.

How I put the figures together: ARF Trooper: Body from the new Lego Star Wars Clone Battle pack / Rancor Trooper: Commander Fox torso with custom print legs from bricklink / Camo ARF  trooper consists of a KZ Body armor from Hazel Fantasy and the body from the new Lego Kingdoms sets.

From left to right: Regular ARF Trooper Helmet, Rancor ARF Trooper, Camouflage ARF Trooper

Each of these presents a good amount of detail; not to mention Arealight did do a pretty good job on matching the reference photos as usual. The best starting place would probably be the typical ARF Trooper Helmet.

The helmet with this same design was also produced by Lego, but to be honest I do prefer Arealight’s version better as it just seems more visually appealing to me personally. And since I mentioned it, here is a comparison between Arealight’s ARF Trooper helmet and Lego’s helmet.

As you can see, Lego has a bit crisper printing on the stripes at the top of the helmet. I’m not sure if it’s just my copy of the helmet or if it’s on all of them, but the stripes on the top are a bit blurred. The color for the blocks of color on the front of the Lego helmet match Lego’s sand green (correct me if I’m wrong) while I’m not really sure what the Lego color equivalent would be for the Arealight helmet’s markings. As for the logo on the “sun visor”, Arealight left out some of the small small details there that Lego was able to recreate. Personally, I think it would have looked better if Arealight could have gotten the detail in or if he had altered the logo a bit.  Regarding the shape itself, I personally like the Arealight helmet because it’s a bit more simplistic and surprisingly fits in with Lego figures a bit better than Lego’s version. The fact you can change the visor color by simply changing the head is just an added bonus.

Moving onto the Rancor trooper: [Middle]

Arealight did a fantastic job with this helmet, the detailing matches perfectly to reference and has a great amount of detailing. There really isn’t much to stay about this, the print itself continues all over the helmet essentially.

Arealight had even included a detailed print of the emblem on both sides of the helmet.

Alright so lastly we have the Camouflage ARF trooper helmet. [Far right on all pictures]

At first glance the helmet’s print job doesn’t seem as good as the other two because it’s a design that is suppose to go all the way around the helmet, but it doesn’t.

Beyond that, the design itself is pretty nice. I’m a bit disappointed though, the color of the print currently does not seem to match any sort of Lego parts that are currently out. The closest color to it that I’ve seen is the dark bluish gray. Also the underside of the visor is still a plain white color, so it limits your photography a bit if you want to take a picture of it without showing that white underside.  All in all, I feel as if this was a helmet that was sort of shafted by the printer’s capabilities.

To wrap things  up:
I would say that the ARF troopers that came out this wave were alright, not as good as some of the other printed helmets. But! If you do plan on getting one of the three, I would suggest getting the Rancor trooper helmet as you will definitely be getting one of the better printed helmets out there. As always though, the best thing to do is to pick the one you would like the best. I’m just here to help you decide ;).

-Apples

Check back for more reviews and possibly a few “how to”s after I finish these reviews!

2nd Wave Printed Helmets

2nd Wave Printed Helmets
Hi there, I’m glad to present our 2nd wave of printed helmets to you. The 2nd wave will consist of 16 different helmets including variations of the ARF Trooper Helmet, Commander Helmet, Mandalorian Helmet, Airborne Helmet, Neyo Helmet and Commando Helmet. The current street date is set to June 10th, so we hope you enjoy the release and thank you for choosing us for your Lego customizing needs.