Living in the wastelands of Angmar these Snow Trolls would adorn themselves with the furs, bones, and skulls of their victims. The most recent statue from Sideshow Collectibles The Lord of the Rings statue line comes to us not from the movies, but from last years awesome game The Lord of the Rings: The War in the North. While not from anything Tolkien wrote himself the game does allow fans of Middle-Earth to venture into events that could have happened during The War of the Ring.
The game takes place during the events of The War of the Ring, but you’re not playing as the Fellowship, you play as one of three characters: Eradan the ranger, Farin the Dwarf or Andriel the Elf, as you aide the Fellowship in stopping Sauron’s plans to take the North, making things much harder for Frodo to complete his quest. During your trek through the North, and the beauty in that area of Middle-Earth, you battle numerous Orcs, crazed Men, and of course Trolls. One of the variations of Trolls you will come across as you play the game is this Snow Troll. Sideshow Collectibles in conjunction with this game was asked to create one of these Trolls for collectors to add to their Middle-Earth collections.
PACKAGING
Graphically the box for the Snow Troll differs just a little bit from the previous releases in this series. Instead of using dark colors on the box this one with plays off the snow aspect going with a mostly white design. Unlike previous releases, with this statue you get one simple image of the troll on the front of the box, and the text on the box follows the design that was used for the game. The stays with the matte look that we’ve seen recently and, of course, great protective foam which helps this troll stay away from issues that plagued the original Cave Troll statue.
SCULPTING
Andy Bergholtz was tasked with taking what fans saw when playing the game and turning it into an awesome 3D version. Saying he was successful in his task would be a major understatement. The complexity of this piece, I believe, was a big challenge with this statue making sure to nail every detail as it would stand out more. When you look at this statue you’re going to see the little pieces of “fur” in his clothing and the bones on this statue do truly look like bones. The Troll itself is amazing with so many fine skin details captured and his facial features are superbly translated from what we’ve seen of Trolls in Tolkien’s world.
The other awesome part of this statue is the Dwarf character that the Troll can hold. Being smaller than say Gimli, which we saw earlier in this line, one would think it would be more difficult making the Dwarf look good. Not a problem for Mr. Bergholtz! This Dwarf is packed with details for this scale and his armor looks like something you could toss together while playing the game. A side note about the Dwarf is that he is not a permanent part of the Trolls hand so if you wanted to display without him you are able to do so. The base on this statue is also very well done with the base being some of the snowy areas you venture into while fighting in the North.
PAINT
Paint detail is always a big deal with statues but maybe even more so when you’re dealing with a statue of this size. The fur, because of the sculpt and paint as I said earlier, looks like a leather/fur combo that will help the Troll do its killing. The skin tone of the Troll is great! You get nice blends of the various greyish tones throughout the Trolls body where its whiter and his scaly back being darker grey. His face is also really well done with a great greyish hue being different than almost fire red eyes. The Dwarf is also painted equally as well as the Troll. As good the sculpting is on the Dwarf, the painting has to be there for it to come off and it’s done really well. There is no strange bleeding and the colors seem Dwarfish as to what we would expect to see of this race. One thing to remember with the Dwarf looking different from the game advertisement, is that you can tweak your Dwarf’s look as you play so this could be just one of several variations.
Overall
The Snow Troll is a superb statue and a truly welcomed addition to this line being the first HUGE and heavy (easily 25lbs) beast statue in this line. This guy can be had for $325 from Sideshow Collectibles and has an addition size of 500 pieces world wide for only this one version. He is currently in-stock from Sideshow Collectibles so do not miss your chance to add this amazing collectible to your collection!
SPECIFICATIONS
The Snow Troll has an edition size of 500 pieces World Wide. The dimensions for the Snow Troll are as followed: 18″ x 18″ x 18″ (H x W x D)
PHOTOS
