X-Men 92 has a long-standing legacy with fans as being among the greatest superhero cartoons of all-time. It’s also how mutants permeated my 10-year-old brain, beginning my life-long love of the X-Men. So when I was given a chance to have a review sample of the Diamond Select Toys X-Men Animated Series Gambit mini bust by Entertainment Earth, I jumped at the opportunity. Now that I’ve spent some time with the first resin Gambit animated statue ever, does the Rajun Cajun spark as much love from me as he did almost 30 years ago?

It was seeing Randy Bowen’s outstanding Gambit bust in the early 2000s that cemented my addiction to Bowen Designs mini busts, so any bust of Remy Lebeau has a tall mountain to climb to impress me.

Gambit has been one of my absolute favorite X-Men team members since I became aware of his existence in 1992, and I’m always hoping for more and more (and better and better) merchandise for the character, so I had sky high hopes for this cartoony rendition of the character.

The box for the bust is nice enough but really nothing special, as it’s the standard colors and style for the whole series of these pieces.

It’s a mite annoying that Beast and Jubilee still have not been announced for this line (although an Animated Deadpool has been released for some reason), although Storm is coming out in a few months at least.

There’s a hand-numbered full-color authenticity card right inside the box, driving home that this piece is a limited edition.

I was somewhat surprised to see that this bust is one solid piece inside the styrofoam, and the long and thin bo staff made it legitimately a bit scary for me to unbox.

The bottom of the Danger Room-styled base again displays the individual number of the mini bust in the 3,000 piece LE run size. Like Cyclops and Wolverine, I’m sure DST will have no troubles at all moving 3K pieces of Gambit at such a low retail price-point.

As this is a value-priced DST product with a $60-ish MSRP (unheard of low for a resin sculpture in this day and age), I was a bit dubious of how the paint quality would be. I am pleased to say that it is pretty nice overall, albeit imperfect. The cel-shaded look with comic book-styled lines looks awesome, particularly on the face, and the shading on the jacket is also well-done.

That said, there’s indisputably some blemishes and paint glop on the chest/abs, which is a shame since they’re a central element of the piece visually in hot pink and bright blue.

If I wasn’t half-blind I would probably be distracted enough that I would have to have my talented wife touch up this paint and some other minor flawed areas, but with my limited vision it’s good enough for me as-is.

The charged card with kinetic energy bubbling off the top looks incredible, and the fireworks-looking radient design on the back of the card is shockingly cool to look at. Even the classic Bowen Designs bust only had plain cards (and they were loose pieces that were easy to drop and lose, dang it), so this is one place where DST scores a definitive victory.

The horizontal staff (painted resin here instead of metal) is also different from the vertical orientation of the Bowen Designs classic. The lateral way the bo staff is held here feels slightly more natural to me, although it also necessitated a much longer box. I like how it looks, though you need to be careful with how you display this piece because of the width the staff adds.

Overall: This value-priced mini bust does an excellent job of capturing the style and attitude of Remy Lebeau. The design itself is great, and the paint is better than I had anticipated (though not without several flaws). I’m not entirely sold on the horizontal orientation of the bo staff, but the charged card looks stupendous from all angles and the portrait definitely conveys Remy’s rogue-ish charm and attitude. I don’t know that I adore this as much as my nearly two-decade-old comic book-styled Bowen Gambit bust, but it’s certainly a standout for me from this X-Men Animated line and among my favorite mini busts of 2021.

I received my review sample of the Animated X-Men Gambit bust from Entertainment Earth, and you can order one from them as well for $54.99 if you want to get in on their upcoming restock.