Let me begin by saying i'm a big supporter of Reprolabels. I've been using their labels soon after they began business and have always praised their service and quality of their products.
That being said, I decided to try out the "opposition".
Opposition you say? Reprolabels have opposition?
Well only when it comes to faction stickers and only for Autobots and Decepticons.
I was searching through
Hobby Link Japan during one of my regular searches for Transformers and weaponary from other lines which I use on my own customs, when I came upon a
set of faction labels produced by a company called Hobby Design. "Metal logos" for my TF's, well I thought that sounded pretty nifty so I ordered myself two sets, which, with postage, set me back $15.90AUD (Roughly $13US)
What do you get? Well you get a sheet of with 40 stickers, 20 Autobot, 20 Decepticon, ranging in sizes from the biggest at 8mmx8mm (0.315 inches) to the smallest at 3mmx3mm (0.1181 inches).
When they arrived the first thing I noticed was the "Kodak Paper" label on the back. hmmmm ... printed on Kodak Paper, wasn't sure if that was a good sign or not.
The second thing I noticed was that they weren't cut out. One of the biggest steps Reprolabels made was when they went from labels you cut out yourself, to ones that were pre-cut and you simply peeled off and applied. This seemed a step back to me. However, the reasoning for it soon became obvious.
For a quick experiment (more a case of me being too impatient really) I applied one of the stickers to one of my recent figures, Bling. It was here that I discovered that while you have to cut the sticker from the sheet, you don't have to trim it to the edge. Once you peel off the backing sticker you then affix the label to the surface you're applying it to, press it down nice and hard, then peel off the clear plastic coating leaving a nice shiny metallic faction sticker in it's place! However a word of warning, you need to be REAL careful when removing the clear plastic coating as the stickers are made up of individual pieces and some may not stick. See the pics for what I mean.
At the point in time of me writing this review, i've only tried the labels on one figure, and my mobile phone, and the one problem I can see is that the metallic surface and the size of them tends to obscure the details, of course this may be dependant on the background surface too given that i've only used them on a dark grey surface and a metallic silver surface.
Overall? I think they're a half decent set. They could be a little larger (to accommodate larger figures) and I think given the right figure, will set the figure off nicely. However I think these labels may be best suited not for figures, but for things like your mobile phones, iPods, etc, in other words, they're bling for Mojo's bling.
I'll be sticking with Reprolabels for my stickers.
Now for some pictures!
Applied to my Nokia phone. Hopefully you can see how it's a nice metallic shiney finish.
This is what happens when you're not careful to check everything has adhered correctly.
My apologies for not having pics of the labels an actual figure, camera just isn't good enough.
