BioShock SDCC 2010 Exclusive Revealed

[JeffSaylor]

Big Sister Eleanor Lamb with a "Saved" Little Sister...

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After several teasers, NECA today reveals in full their BioShock 2 San Diego Comic-Con Exclusive: an action figure 2-pack of Big Sister Eleanor Lamb with a "Saved" Little Sister. Eleanor features a redecoed Big Sister figure body, including a new head sculpt, collar and the lack of shoulder armor. The "Saved" Little Sister comes painted like a normal little girl (as they appear at the end of the game) and includes a small Bouncer doll accessory.

Other SDCC 2010 exclusives revealed include action figures of Jace Stratton from the Gears of War comic and Terminator 2 "Liquid Metal" T-1000.

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[Peajam]

The teasers of this proved to have potential but now i see the full image my excitement has gone down hill. The choice of word 'redecoed' i completely disagree with, i'll admit they have added bits and taken some away but they really should have worked more on the body because it doesnt look like that (it doesnt have the corset or upper leg armour and she has a yellowy coloured jumpsuit underneath). What has happened NECA? you were great with game accurate detail, why did you not look into more detail on her or spend more time getting everything right? I'm sorry if i appear to rant on but i enjoy getting my true feelings out there and i also enjoy game accurate figures. Keep up the good work NECA but dont go off track

[JeffSaylor]

No, you aren't the only one. Randy addressed this on twitter in regards to someone else saying it doesn't look like her:

Eleanor or Big Sis unmasked is a compromise of what we could do w available budget. Too $$ tooling a whole new body 4 sdcc

All boils down to tooling, which fans have to understand costs THOUSANDS of dollars (double digits). That's why you see a lot of reuse when possible - Eleanor (Big Sister tweek) and Jace Stratton (Marcus body with new head) and T-1000 (which is a repaint). You see it with most toy lines actually. Look at MOTU and DCUC, same re-use of bodies...new head and paint.

[JeffSaylor]

This just in from Randy on the official BiOShock forums regarding the BioShock exclusive (little bit more in-depth than twitter:

Wow, I didn't expect such strong reactions from some of you on the SDCC exclusive. First I'd like to explain the nature of a show exclusive. It is not to make some amazing be all end all figure just because it is an exclusive. The production run for a convention item is 10-20% of the run for a retail item so we are a lot more limited in costs since we sell 80-90% less of the Eleanor/Unmasked Big Sister vs a regular retail figure.

Second doing SDCC is very expensive between the booth space, the travel, hotels, being out of the office for a week, etc so the exclusives help to cover the costs of the show. We look at SDCC as a huge marketing event and selling the exclusive figures covers some of that marketing/advertising cost.

Third we always strive for complete accuracy and authenticity on all of our lines. We developed this item with 2K and with the understanding that it was not exactly how Eleanor is seen at the very end but we did the best we could with the available budget and time and reference that was available. In case some of you forgot there was a time when there was only 1 Big Sister not several and also we sculpted many of these figures over a year ago in early 2009 when Bioshock 2 was supposed to release in November 2009.

So unfortunately she still has on her leather work and harness but we did remove the armored shoulder pads to help with her silhouette and we did tool the new head and collar as well as adding a "Saved" Little Sister. We realize that Eleanor is not perfect but had we allocated our tooling budget to creating an all new body we would have to sacrifice new figures for retail somewhere else. Now I don't know about you but I would rather put our budget towards new figures like a Brute Splicer, a Ceiling Crawler, etc or full size Splicer masks that 100% of our audience can buy as opposed to a limited edition show exclusive that maybe 20% of our audience will have access to.

That being said no one is forcing you to buy anything. Vote with your wallet and if you don't like it don't buy it. I regret that it does not live up to some of your expectations but I still think it is a cool item and gives Bioshock fans something unique or special to take home from San Diego that they won't find at retail.

I am very proud of the work we have done on Bioshock and I think the figures are an amazing value and that nothing else compares to them especially at that price point on store shelves. We have a lot more Bioshock in store and new prototypes to show you in San Diego this July.

[Peajam]

I understand, thanks for the info Jeff. It was never a huge issue for me, i was going to get her anyway even with the wrong body I'm still glad they went to the trouble of making a new head sculpt and doing everything they could with the budget they had (i never realised it cost so much just to make a new body ) and they even went to the trouble of making a 'saved' little sister to make up for it. I also agree with putting there time and money into better things like the full size splicer mask which sounds totally awesome i also take back alot of the things i said in the previous post because i didnt know all the facts then. Keep up the good work NECA and bring us bigger and better things like you always have !

One last thing; why do they even bother with exclusives if the exclusive isnt going to be as good if, say, they just brought it out in a series? they might aswell just stop with the exclusives if they cant do as much work on the figure or spend as much money as they do with other retail figures