Review of Jessica Chobot Statue

Introduction

Andy Warhol commented on the fleeting nature of 'celebrity', as well as the media's ability to give fame to anyone and take it away just as quickly, when he commented in 1968 that in the future, everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. This ability for anyone to reach fame quickly in fad-like fashion, and also in fad-like fashion lose it almost immediately as the masses' attention moves on to the next gimmick of the day, has only increased with the web and the kind of instantaneous mass communication that is now available.

So the question really isn't "will my fifteen minutes come", it's "will I be able to parlay my fifteen minutes into something real?". You can be Joe the Plumber, who turned his moment in the spotlight into a book deal and a job as a war correspondent, or you can be the Star Wars Kid, who curled up into the fetal position while others profited off his spastic 15 minutes.

Which brings us to Jessica Chobot. Yes, the anime statue you see in these photos is not a fantasy character. She's not a traditional celebrity, in that she doesn't sing, or dance, or act, at least not that I know of. What is she? Well, she's hot, that's for sure. That's not necessary for Internet fame of course (please refer back to the Star Wars Kid), but it sure as Hell doesn't hurt. She's also a major video game nerd. I'll avoid any lame, stupid jokes at the expense of my geeky brethren and just say that truly hot members of this club tend to be rare. Not Dodo bird rare, but the SDCC shouldn't be your first choice if you're looking to pick up babes of either gender.

So Ms. Chobot is hot...did I mention she's hot?...and she's a geek. But while that's somewhat rare, it's certainly not rare enough to be all you need to snag your 15 minutes. No, you need something more, and for her, it was licking a PSP.

She did this in 2005, or least that's when the modeling photo of her licking the PSP hit the Internet, hard. That could have been it for her, but she parlayed the fame into a full time gig working for IGN.com, where she is an on camera host and staff writer. In the couple years since she started working for them, she has gained a big base of fans, and plenty of haters as well. Did I mention she was hot?

Now Symbiote Studios has released a 10" statue based on Ms. Chobot. It's done in an anime style, and retails for about $40. It's also a very limited edition, with only 250 statues produced. You can pick it up through Symbiote direct, and I have some other suggestions in the Where to Buy section.

Packaging - **1/2
The statue comes in a fairly standard box, with some brief text on the back about Ms. Chobot. The outer box is not particularly heavy weight cardboard, and it can be torn fairly easy, but the inner plastic tray should keep the statue fairly safe. It's also collector friendly, like most statue and bust packaging.

Sculpting - **1/2
As is usual with statues, I've broken up the general appearance of the figure into both Sculpt AND Design. I have some real issues with this statue, but these are generally Design issues, rather than technical sculpt issues.

This is obviously done in anime/manga style. It's the usual hot anime chick, and the level of detail is about right for the style. The hair isn't particularly detailed, and the figure has only some basic clothing wrinkles for texturing, but that's pretty consistent with this artistic paradigm.

However, if it weren't for the controller in her hand, and the open mouth, you wouldn't know this was Jessica Chobot. Even with these two elements, I'm betting even her hard core fans wouldn't realize it was supposed to be her without a little prompting.

The statue is fairly large, standing a full 10". She's permanently attached to the base, and the sculpted additions on the base include a couple game cases, a can of pop, and a bag of wasabi chips.

It's really the controller and these base pieces that pull this score down from three stars to two and a half for me. The figure herself, ignoring whether she looks a whole lot like Ms. Chobot or not, is nicely sculpted. But the controller has a harsh, rough look to it, as does the items on the base. The bag of chips is particularly disappointing, since it looks very little like a bag of chips, and a lot more like a green piece of...something unrecognizable.

Paint - **1/2
The paint is decent, but there's a fair number of sloppy cut lines and a bit of glop (particularly on the controller) that's visible. There were also a few errant marks, but the coverage was generally consistent and even.

The Jinx logo on her shirt and her tramp stamp are both done as stickers, but they are applied extremely well, and you have to pay fairly close attention to notice.

Design - **1/2
While the basic technical quality of the sculpt is reasonably good, I did have some design issues.

These issues revolve largely around her hips and lower stomach. The are very round and smooth, and look quite unnatural. Yea, it's done in a cartoon style, so it's not supposed to be 'real', I get it. But the hips look weird even for a caricature, even an anime one. Perhaps the issue is that most anime art depicts woman in a very attractive way, and the hips and stomach here look really odd and unappealing. Maybe it's the unusual cut of her low riders...maybe it's the extremely high belly button. Whatever the case, she looks great from the bottom of the shirt up, and from the crotch down. In between, she loses me.

Let's forget the hips for a second. I assume that the idea here was to make it appear as though she was licking the controller. However, with the wide open mouth and the tongue only painted inside, it looks more like she's going to take a bite out of it. And what's with the one weird fang-like tooth? I don't recall ever seeing a photo of Ms. Chobot in a role playing outfit where she was pretending to be a vampire with dental issues, but I suppose it's possible.

Value - **1/2
This is a 10" statue, made from heavy polystone and with a decent sculpt and paint quality, all for just $40. That's cheaper than pretty much most mini-busts these days, let alone comparable statues. This is also an extremely limited run of just 250, making it tough to see how they are even breaking even on this.

Things to Watch Out For -
Not a thing. Nothing to assemble, and there's no real small parts to break easily.

Overall - **1/2
I really want to love this statue - I like the guys over at Symbiote and what they've been doing, and Jessica Chobot is hot, just in case I haven't mentioned that. But this statue had too many design issues for me, and the sculpt was rougher and a bit more 'custom' looking than I prefer.

Of course, if you're a huge Chobot fan, it's pretty good odds that you aren't going to get a ton of merchandise choices, so this might be your only chance to have a Chobot figure on your shelf. At an edition size of 250, and the very reasonable price of $40, the big Chobot fan could do worse.

Score Recap (out of ****):
Packaging - **1/2
Sculpting - **1/2
Paint - **1/2
Design - **1/2
Value - ***1/2
Overall - **1/2

Where to Buy 
You can pick this up direct from Symbiote Studios for $40, or you can search ebay for a deal.

Related Links -
You can always check out Jessica Chobot's blog at IGN, and I've looked at a couple other Symbiote Studios products, including the very cool Sam and Max statue, Stykman, and the Dr. Tran bobbleheads.

You should also hit the Search Reviews page, in case any other applicable reviews were done after this one was published.

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