NECA Pacific Rim Ultra Deluxe Hardship Review

NECA Pacific Rim Ultra Deluxe Hardship Review

The Pacific Rim line is finally drawing to a close, rounding out its line NECA released an Ultimate Version of Gipsy Danger and the final Kaiju: Hardship. Who? Yeah, exactly. Hardship is essentially the Dengar or Sy Snoodles of the Pacific Rim Universe. Appearing in a ‘blink or you’ll miss it’ scene at the beginning of the movie when Charlie Hunnam’s character narrates the backstory about the Kaiju invasion. Seen for about six seconds in total fighting with USAF Jaeger Romeo Blue, and in three of those six seconds, shown as product placement on kids shoe commercial. Sad!

So why should we care about buying such a no name Kaiju? Let’s start off with the fact that he is big. Hardship shares the same mold as the recently released Mutavore. While he isn’t the size of Otachi, he is bigger than the Knifehead molds and has more articulation and posability. Reminiscent of a rhino beetle, Hardship has a giant curved horn on his head and a big thick carapace on his back that looks more natural than the ones found on the Knifehead bodies. Much like the Otachi sculpts, Hardship has a split lower mandible with ball joints allowing for several different mouth positions: open, semi open, or shut jaws. His inner arms have a better range of movement as well which can let him actually grab a few of the Jaegers in a bear hug instead of hanging around looking useless.

The only accessory he comes with is the same stand that Mutavore had. It’s used for a more hunched over or running type of stance, but as you can see he has no issue standing up on his own with the assistance of his tail.

If there is one thing that seems to be universally agreed on with NECA products is its paint applications. However with as good as the figures look, the Kaiju in this line have all suffered from being a greenish blue mix. But you could only do so much with the source material given. Hardship mixes that up and looks strikingly different with his bold purple and dirty browns while retaining being bright with yellow and green highlights. Attention to detail is also shown with his claws, spikes, and head horn being weathered and worn looking compared to the rest of his body showing off that he has been fighting for awhile now. Don’t worry about such a different colored figure though, with all the Kaiju having cool colors, it isn’t too disjointed looking at them all grouped up together.
While we will never get to see NECA take on the remaining few Kaiju: Onibaba, Raiju and Slattern. I believe Hardship is a perfect bookend Kaiju to the Pacific Rim line for the foreseeable future. That is until NECA hopefully picks up the license again when Pacific Rim 2 drops in 2018.

Hardship is currently available at Amazon, as well as Entertainment Earth.

NECA Pacific Rim Ultra Deluxe Hardship Review

(Our guest reviewer David Boyce hails from ‘parts unknown’ or Pittsburgh, same thing. But he does run a lovely show called The Clouded Judgement Podcast. He used to be part of the Broken Glasses Podcast, but the host of the show Kevin did not want to 1 v 1 me in Heroes of the Storm so I assumed all control of it.)

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David Boyce

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