It’s high time I posted at least one Maow Miniatures review. Fortunately I have a chance to review one sweet but tiny miniature from them – a little devil in a nappy: Hell baby.
Packaging
This little beauty came to me as a gift form Slawol (thx sooooo much mate!) in a little plastic bag.
That’s the standard Maow packaging as far as I know. At least when it comes to those tiny minis (that’s my 5th Maow mini for now btw). Maybe they use blisters or something else for bigger pieces, I don’t know.
Inside the bag
- The mini is
17mm tall
- and in 3 pieces (you use just two of them):
- body
- hand with a rakes
- hand with a little trident
Quality
As you can see on pictures, cast isn’t extremely clean, there are some specks of resin that looks like residues after casting and two or three delicate mold lines. But is should be easy enough to clean. In fact good old toothbrush and warm soap should do the trick with the little thingies and few minutes with scalpel should be enough to get rid of the mold lines. As far I can see there is just one little air bubble on his little toe, but a drop of Mr Surfacer should fix it.
I don’t see the point of describing every and each of my Maow minis. They are pretty much the same quality: funny concepts, beautiful details, a lot of character, small mold lines sometimes, a bit of ‘resin dirt’ and air bubble from time to time.
Maybe not perfect but still good enough and enjoyable.
My personal opinion about the company
- I guess with 5 minis at home I can afford some generalization:
- brilliant ideas
- funny minis
- good enough quality (all the issues are easy to fix)
- reasonable prices
I’m really looking forward to buy more of their minis, maybe some monster bottles this time??
Where to buy
The company itself sells minis only in France (mostly because of the shipping costs), but on their website you can find list of online stores in other countries where you can buy their stuff.
— Marta
Thank you for your objective review Marta.
To complete it, I may add that the figures are all sent in Zip bag and there is no base. Blister is better but it costs more and would require us to change our way of sending to France (we send in a cardboard envelope which is only 2 centimètres thick).
We want to keep rates low. For example the hell baby, we pay 1 euro fee for molding a copy, and we sell it 2.5 euros (to this we must remove the price of the master, zip bags and labels).
And given the choice, many people will still choose a ziplock bag. Smaller, lower weight, easier to ship, and additionally: cheaper.
Sure, blisters look nicer than ziplock bags, but both have their advantages. Some companies offer their products in two variants: ziplock bags (for online stores) and blisters for normal stores (as the extra eye-candy can be an additional buyer magnet).
Would I pay extra to get a blister? Not necessarily. I would throw it away anyway as soon as the miniature is painted.
Thanks for chiming in, Matou!
For me, the packaging is a moot point. I was strictly after an interesting mini with a grand underlying of humor. I feel fortunate to have come across the Maow minis on CMON. I have the hell baby and three others waiting on my desk. Now to find the time to work on them.