Sideshow Collectibles must have heard me complaining last week about the dearth of new additions to their 1/4 scale X-Men statue series, because shortly thereafter, an all-new Sideshow Exclusive Nightcrawler Premium Format Figure statue went up for pre-order! It’s the first new Nightcrawler statue to go up for sale in many years—does it look like it will be worth quarter-scale big bucks?

I have to assume that the pandemic put a big scare into Sideshow Collectibles so far as soliciting new $500+ 1:4 statues goes, and that that’s why we’ve only seen a handful of new PF X-Men statues over the last year. Whatever the reason is, we are still awaiting Sideshow Premium Format Beast, Iceman, Bishop and Archangel figures (among others), but I am hyped at least to see Nightcrawler joining Storm in the class of 2021 pre-orders.

Iron Studios just released a very cool Kurt Wagner 1/10 scale resin statue of their own, but Sideshow’s is on a whole other level of size and dynamic design.

The acrobatic Nightcrawler is posed cleverly “BAMF!”-ing out of the grasp of a Sentinel. It’s a fun bit of storytelling I wasn’t expecting, and hits all the right narrative chords for me. I dig it.
At 23” tall, this is the largest Nightcrawler figure ever produced, but since it’s only 13” deep it won’t be as difficult to find a display spot for as I feared.

Kurt’s yellow-orange painted eyes really do look like they’re glowing, and I actually really like the mostly neutral expression on the portrait. The pink paint shading on the body representing the lighting reflection from the “BAMF” teleportation cloud is also pretty slick. Everything about this statue feels in-character and on-target.

The base for the Nightcrawler PF figure follows along with the usual Sentinel motif, this time being a Sentinel hand base instead of the slightly more common Sentinel heads.

I never thought I’d be sick of seeing chunks of Sentinels represented in resin form, but I am certainly reaching that saturation point.

That said, the design for this particular piece strikes me as rather ingenious, so I think I can ignore Sentinel fatigue a short bit longer.

I like to think that somewhere out there in the statue fantasy world, there’s a herd of Dismembered Sentinels roaming about, looking for their severed hands.

Like most X-Men Sideshow statues, there is a Sideshow Exclusive Nightcrawler version only available through their website. While an alternate extra head would be neat, the Sideshow Nightcrawler EX comes packing a pair of interchangeable hands holding swords instead. Swashbuckling is a well-known aspect of Kurt Wagner’s character, and the swords themselves look great here (particularly the detailed hilts). For the 20 bucks extra the Exclusive Edition costs, I think it’s well worth getting the extra hands with swords.

Speaking of costs, the Premium Format Nightcrawler Sideshow Statue retails for “just” $595 for the normal version and $615 for the EX. That is by no means “cheap,” but it is a very reasonable price in modern times for such a large and action-posed resin statue. I genuinely thought this would be a $700 piece when I saw it.

 

The exclusive version of the Sideshow Premium Format Nightcrawler 1/4 statue is now up for order, and is scheduled to ship in late 2022. That’s good news for collectors like me who like to start their payment plans super early and pay as little as possible for each monthly payment.

What are your thoughts on the first-ever Nightcrawler Premium Format Figure, X-Men (and Excalibur) fans? And who is the #1 X-Men character you most want to see Sideshow tackle next?