*REVIEW* SSUReal "From the Cradle to the Grave" vinyl skull, Kidrobot Black's newest edition

Kidrobot Black's latest project is set to drop TODAY 4/13/2010 and this time around Kidrobot teams up with Ruslan Karblin aka "SSUR" for this limited edition run of their SSUReal "From the Cradle to the Grave" vinyl skull! We first saw the teaser image of the figure HERE, and KR was not dropping any hints at that time, people starting throwing out names and the rumor mill was a churning and sites finally started to reveal the true identity of this upcoming exclusive Kidrobot release, and thanks to the great folks over at KR, they sent over one of these for me to put my grubby hands all over and give all of you an honest verdict, then again I love skull figures, so I may be biased :-)... either way please continue to read on as I review the SSUR X KR vinyl skull!

So lets first talk about the "figure" or shall I say sculpture... any way you wanna put it, this is going to sit on your shelf and collect dust just like the rest of your toys/figures, but it might just do it with more style than the rest... more on that later. This skull sits very nice and still on a flat surface and measures 6" tall x 5" wide x 8" long, so it's a nice sized piece! It's matte black vinyl that is also embossed with a "sylvan" pattern all over, it looks quite flashy!

The jaw of the skull has what they are calling "Articulation" which is accomplished by ball joints... now this seems like kinda a crappy way to accomplish this, as I have other skulls that have some great articulation in the jaw, not with ball joints but with horizontal pins and hooked bottom jaws, this skull has little to no articulation and when placed on a flat surface opened mouth, it will slowly find itself closed over time, that being said it does not bother me because it's going to sit looking pretty with its mouth closed anyways! Both jaws are adorned with some shiny teef (yes I meant to say teef not teeth) that are made from gold chrome-plated ABS, this is a great addition IMHO as it really has a nice contrast to the already dull colored skull! The bottom on the piece also contains a gold embossed Kidrobot X SSUR logo

Now onto the quality of the piece... retailing for $200 and being limited to 200 pieces worldwide you would think that this would be flawless... on the contrary, it's just slightly flawed, but once again this does not detract from my overall opinion. There are some pretty noticeable seam-lines on this figure, all which are pretty much hidden when the figure is on a flat surface, except for the very bottom of the bottom jaw where a seam line travels from one side to another, and also my piece had a chip on one of the back gold molars, yet again not noticeable without inspecting it very closely. The packaging is very nice an simple... showing that the majority of the cost is put into the figure.

What is the verdict... after holding this in my hand and looking at it very closely I can honestly say that this is a SICK piece of vinyl. It feels more collectible... unlike the first release of the Baseman "Midnight Magi" which was more of a figure, and from what I understand seemed rushed and pretty low quality. This figure on the other hand is dope in my book, the price may be a little bit high, but the details and fairly high quality of this justify the high price. Pick it up if you have the money, in fact save your money and pick it up then, it's a really cool piece!