Review – Troy Stith’s Virulentos

Are you sick of reading reviews of short-run, hand-cast and hand-painted resin toys? I hope not, because today we’re taking a look at Troy Stith’s first resin toy, Virulentos. (Check out Troy’s blog right here.) This tiny guy, limited to a run of 4 pieces, may very well be the first of the miniature, non-articulated resin toys to really impress me.

(And even impress me to the point that I could see myself taking a shot at a tiny resin toy without any articulation, which is a leap since I’ve been focused on making sure to have some articulation once I finish a design. But you’re not reading this to hear what I may or may not do.)

A few days ago, the day after he arrived, I took Virulentos out for a walk and snapped several shots of him exploring downtown Austin (you can see some of the photos here). While carrying Virulentos with me, and constantly posing him for photos, I had plenty of time to get a good feeling for his weight, style, and for the sheer cuteness of the guy to grow on me. To be fair, Virulentos had a major advantage the second that I saw him because he’s green (green and red toys are the best, except for stormtroopers which look awesome in white). But rather than waste a lot of space rambling on about colors and walks and stormtroopers, let’s take a serious look at this resin toy.

Packaging

This is the one negative mark on Virulentos, because he comes packed in a plain brown box. No customized artwork, no cute little insert card, not even the standard plastic bag with header card. To be fair, Virulentos was very well packed and survived his travels through the mail, but I like to see my toys come with some sort of stylized packaging. Hopefully Troy’s next toy will be packed with a little more style.

I know I’m weird, because I both love cool packaging design and I open my toys, but it’s how I am.

Virulentos is Kinda Heavy

For a 2.5-inch tall toy — I said he was tiny — this guy is a brick. He’s gotta be heavier than most 3.75-inch mass market action figures, and every time that I pick him up I’m impressed with the heft because it gives him the feeling that he’s a durable toy. He’s not, though, because he’s a hand-painted chunk of resin, but the illusion of durability is nice. It’s also dangerous; several times now I’ve caught myself not treating this guy as gently as I should. While out walking around he rode in my backpack and I sometimes forgot to wrap him back up before setting off on more steps.

A Rough Sculpt and Evidence of Hand-Casting

As I’ve mentioned before, designer toys are either silky smooth or kinda rough and crude; both styles of toy are neat, and sometimes it’s less about the smooth or crude than it is the overall heart and soul of the piece. Virulentos is somewhere between the two, falling more on the rough side of the line than the smooth, with some rough edges on the teeth and jagged lines around the mouth and mask. Tiny seams and ripples throughout the piece immediately identify it as hand-crafted, and a few indented spots on the underside show evidence of air bubbles. Overall this is an excellent casting of the original sculpt with very few imperfections.

My favorite part of the Virulentos design has to be the teeth. Six sculpted spots outlined with black paint, this reminds me a lot of the style of teeth I sculpted onto a custom a few years ago (a Jumungo Sqwert that I chopped into with the Dremel and then added a Munny TV) except that Virulentos’ teeth look much better than what I created.

Paint

Virulentos is obviously a hand-painted piece, with some of the black lines just a little jagged in places. It’s nothing terrible — and is cleaner than I would have done had I been sitting there painting four of these guys at once — and isn’t even really noticeable unless you lay down in the dirt and take pictures of this guy from four-inches away. The paint job’s clean, with no serious brush strokes (I’m not even sure if I see any brush marks on the green body), and I think the color choices were perfect. Green with yellow eyes, a black mask, and silver details? Works for me!

(And it wouldn’t be a fun review if I didn’t sit Virulentos down with some other toys. The shot above shows Troy’s Virulentos with the Mooks (reviewed here) and Bullhorn (reviewed here) resin toys. Cool crowd of resin toys!

Closing Thoughts

Even though he doesn’t have any articulation at all, Virulentos is one of the cuter resin toys I’ve picked up over the last few months. He’s heavy, well-sculpted and painted, and is clearly a work the artist can be proud of. As a limited run work of art, though, he’s not a great toy because he’s not easy to replace which means that playing with him is a risk.

As of this writing there’s still at least one Virulentos toy left in Troy’s shop (right here), so if you like the way he looks — and you’re up to spending $20 on a piece of limited artwork – I’d say this is a good guy to grab. If you’ve never bought a resin toy before this one will show you what the scene can produce.

Virulentos on Other Sites

• Patch Together – Vote to get Virulentos into production so that there are more than four copies out there in the world.
  
• SpankyStokes – Enter to win a custom Virulentos painted by Rsin. But hurry, since the contest ends June 18.

Philip Reed can say with confidence that he’ll grab the artist’s next resin toy. Troy has a great style, put some real work into crafting this toy, and his resin toys should only improve with more experience.