It was when Iron Studios actually solicited a resin statue of Pyro that I knew they were dead serious about making their 1:10 scale X-Men Battle Diorama Series the deepest range of X-Men statues ever made–and also when I started to get really, really excited about the line. Now that he’s in-hand at an affordable-ish ~$160, is this fiery former member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants worth his price-tag?

Pyro has had a pretty good last couple years, including being raised from the dead, having a new 6” Hasbro Marvel Legends figure released, joining Captain Kate Pryde’s crew of Marauders, getting a badass skull tattooed onto his face and now getting his first full-body statue ever, care of rising star Iron Studios.

Ever since killing him many times in the early 90s X-Men arcade game, I’ve been a big fan of the original Pyro, St. John Allerdyce. I loved both his Toybiz action figures, and I even made sure to hunt down his LE 100 Bowen Designs variant bust so that I could say I owned every collectible of the character ever made.

As is the norm, the Pyro Iron Studios statue comes inside a nicely-decorated graphic art box, inside of a plain brown shipper. The art box looks nice, albeit rather simplistic. No complaints from me.

Inside the box and styrofoam, the piece comes well-protected in four pieces: the figure, base and two flame effects blasts.

Even half-blind, these Iron Studios X-Men statues are generally easy enough to assemble that I can pop them together with minimal effort, and Pyro is no exception.

Once he’s leaning onto the wreckage on the base, the Pyro figure is very stable and I wasn’t worried about him toppling off at all. The base is nothing flashy with just some cracked concrete terrain and what looks like a sort of ruined engine, but it does the job of looking suitable for building onto the battle scene created by previous X-Men BDS base “environments”.

Each of the fiery flamethrower effects has a little peg at the end that slots in above Pyro’s wrists. These seemed pretty stable to me, but my wife has much better vision than me now and thought they were looking a little wobbly.

Each fire effects piece is a unique sculpt, and I’m grateful Iron Studios didn’t lazily just clone the same flame twice. The translucent orange flames look appropriately dangerous, and Pyro is posed in an excellent stance to expertly utilize his mutant powers to control them.

Since Pyro can only control flames and not create them (“a god among insects”), he has his trusty flamethrower backpack attached. It’s got slick-looking gradient deco on it and I dig the weathering wash on the metal.

I was worried when I bumped the thin black tubes running from the backpack to Pyro’s wrists that they would snap, but they’re made of a soft enough material that they aren’t as super readily breakable as might be feared.

Perhaps the standout bit of sculpting detailing on this sculpture is the elaborate texture on the red parts of Pyro’s costume (presumably some sort of flame-resistant material). This bumpy texture is a wonderful contrast to the smooth yellow portions of the costume.

What I’m less enamored with is the paint apps on Pyro’s portrait. At the tiny 1/10 scale it can be exceedingly tough to perfectly apply painted details, and as such I’m not shocked that some of the tiny lines and deco on the mask and hair aren’t absolutely pristine. Even so, I am disappointed at some minor imperfections on an otherwise outstanding piece.

Overall: As usual, Iron Studios has done a bang-up job here with another classic X-Men character. I think the actual pose/design and sculpting detail on the Pyro BDS are killer, I appreciate the unique sculpts of the two flame blasts, and it’s really only some of the fine paint details on the head and portrait that aren’t as cleanly-applied as I would like. I don’t imagine we’ll be seeing any other companies lining up to release their own resin statues of Pyro, so I’m pleased to own what is now the finest representation of the character ever in collectibles form.

GRADE:A-