In recent times it seems WeArtDoing figures are gaining popularity, so I’ve decided to review my most recent arrival – silver fin shark fairy. The blue and white colour scheme appealed to me more than the black theme.
Preorder price: CN¥1,180 (£129.34)
Price including shipping: CN¥1,560 (£172.24)
I did opt to ship EMS from China to the UK, but the box is huge:
With the shipping packaging, it was 44x39x36cm and 4.3kg. So even with other lines, shipping wasn’t going to be cheap.
As per their other figures, the box art is based around the “primary” variant, then a sticker on the back tells you which one is inside. The front tagline reads “In the hush below, a folded dream floats where plastic and waves turn to echoes, then rises at daybreak to let the ocean’s heart beat once more.” Yeah, I have no idea either, sounds pretty though. The art is cute and nicely themed so she isn’t floating in a void.
The sides of the box just say “SLEEPING BEAUTY”:
The top and bottom is their logo:
Nice blue marble on these sides.
The back has the technical information about the figure and the aforementioned variant sticker in the top left:
So nothing particularly notable about the other sides aesthetically. But looking at the Chinese and the English, the brand is given as We Art Doing in the Chinese and SankToys in the English. Sank is their “main” brand.
Inside:
Took these photos after I had unboxed her so there’s nothing in the slots. The stand fits at the top, the tray to the right and shark fairy herself in the final large slot. The small one to the top-left contained a loyalty card – they’ve stopped numbering the individual figures so it just proclaims “limited edition of 498”. The foam piece at the bottom of the picture sits atop the foam insert, protecting all the parts from any pressure on top of the box.
Base
The first part to take out of the box is the stand:
This allows you to stand her up at an angle, so she can be viewed easily when displayed on a shelf. Solid, white, heavy. Not too much to say about it.
Next up was the tray:
Originally this was packed in two layers of plastic, one around the tray one around the tray and plastic shreds. So next was working out how to disassemble it:
The plastic wrap remnants magnetically attach to the tray in two halves and can be slid off. Easy enough to slide on and off.
Tray on its own:
Looks the part, but it’s hard plastic instead of disposable. The lines definitely give it the feel of a cheap disposable tray.
Figure
The figure magnetized to the tray:
If you look closely at the tray photo, you can see two small circles which are the magnets.
Close-up of the magnet in the tail:
With the clear plastic here, the magnet is very visible from the back, but you don’t see it from the front.
Fully assembled:
She’s very much an eye-catching figure in my opinion. The blues complement the white and her skin tone.
Body close-up:
She has a good amount of shading on her body, giving her a soft look and emphasising such areas as the hip joint, ankles, toes and elbow and wrists.
Face close-up:
Aww, so cute, so sleepy. The face feels like it has more detail to it than previous WeArtDoing figures I own – she has a couple of paint layers to her eyebrows and more shading around her face. Also her lips have more of a shape to them. I love the soft look her face has.
Her hair has a shine to it – I won’t be surprised if this is divisive. I think it fits in with her being a fantasy creature.
Hair:
It peeks through the plastic wrap – I like the way this looks. She has clear hair tips – I like the clear effect, but I know there are a number of people who aren’t a fan of clear hair. I think this fits in well with the icy theme and I love the colour fade from an aqua to more of a sea green.
Top of the hair:
Here we can see where the hair blends from opaque to clear. She also has a fin ear to continue the shark theme – I like this detail.
There’s also a surprising amount of 3D to the figure – she has a pair of stabilising fins on her tail that you can see from this angle.
Gills:
I don’t think the close-up does them much justice – they look a bit more like scars or burn marks when you’re this close. But the effect is well done when you’re not so up close. And here we can also see the seashells protecting her modesty – WeArtDoing doesn’t do fully nude figures. I like this choice of cover as it fits in with the figure theme, versus using something more “supermarket”-y like some black wrap or tape.
She also has a fin on her back that’s blended into her skin. I think it could’ve done with some more texture to it so it wasn’t as shiny but it doesn’t affect my enjoyment of the figure.
Back:
Here we can see where they’ve done some blending of the back fin and tail to her body. I think her tail could’ve done with a bit more of a dark layer near her tail to blend it in a bit more. Again, not a deal-breaker, but think it would enhance it. The skin paint is very good though – no complaints from me there.
Tail joint:
From some angles it looks like there’s a bit of a gap, but it’s mostly shadow. I like the little fin back here, though it does open up questions of where her cloaca is, assuming she has one. Definitely no butthole back here. It also has a nice pearlescent finish.
Tail:
And the main attraction of the figure: the shark tail. I like the way she’s hugging it in her sleep – it’s probably something I’d do if I had a tail. I also like the icy colours of the tail – it has a couple of colour shifts which help give it detail. Poor lass isn’t A-grade – she has a tear in one of the bottom tail fins. With the shift to translucent it gives a very “ice shark” vibe to me. I think the colour choices complement the figure well.
Taking her out of her tray:
She’s shaded and detailed on the reverse side too, if you display in a way that this side would be visible. She does have some flatness to her hair, but the rest of her isn’t superflat. That magnet is definitely visible from this angle though.
Close-up of the hair from the back:
The colour shift from white to blue is a bit more sudden on this side, but still loving the colour shifts. I also love the effort they’ve put into her curls.
So those magnets… are they any good? Yes! She is held to the tray quite solidly – she’s not going to slip off without being strongly nudged or tugged. The wrapper also helps protect her as it is solid plastic. The tray sits sturdily on the base – it wouldn’t withstand attack by cat, but it’s not going to randomly fall off.
And if you’ve got this far in the review, here’s some trivia:
See this barcode? I scanned it and… it’s an actual barcode! I did see that it had the correct guard bars, so I thought I’d give it a scan and it picked up.
So what’s the barcode for this lass? 6977397120038. It didn’t return anything of note in Google hits, so I thought I’d fire it through GS1 verifier:
The text is “藏克文化艺术(厦门)有限公司”, which machine-translates to “Zangke Culture & Art (Xiamen) Co., Ltd.”. “Zangke” is “Sank”, which is WeArtDoing’s parent brand. So this barcode does belong to WeArtDoing/Sank. I did hunt around to see if this barcode was registered to the Shark Girl as a product, but couldn’t find any matches. But it is right there on her packaging! Not on the outer box though. A rare time there is a genuine barcode on a figure and I’m here for it 😆.
Conclusion
Overall I love this figure – sea creatures is one of my special interests, so the theme was definitely of interest to me. I think I picked the right variant for me – the blues and pale greys are more aesthetic to me than the black/brown/blue of the main variant. Some previous WeArtDoing figures don’t have the greatest skin shading so it’s nice to see they’ve upped their game with this one especially as she’s very much up front and centre. She’s a good balance of human to shark and I love the expressiveness in her pose. The figure is easy to assemble and holds together well. She’s well-protected enough to survive the international shipping trip too – they put some foam blocks around her to help prevent her wiggling in transit.
I think if you enjoy what you see with this figure, it’s worth considering picking her up – just expect the postage cost to hurt somewhat. I’m in the UK so our shipping costs aren’t too bad, but if you need to ship with a volumetric method to the US, that’ll hurt. The packaging on mine was the WeArtDoing shipper box tightly fit into a HPOI box. So for AmiAmi you can expect higher size/weight as they’ll include their forest around the shipper, but the size/weight will work if you’re shipping from China and not adding extra packaging. Within the WAD shipper, they do include foam corners to hold the product box away from the edges. I can see some people opting for sea shipping on this one.