Overview
The toy manufacturer Volks, founded in 1972, is better known in toy circles for their Dollfie vinyl dolls and Super Dollfie ball-jointed dolls, as well as their famously high-quality garage kits and being one of the few companies licensed to produce model kits of Mamoru Nagano’s Five Star Stories.
However, in 2017, Volks released its own girlpla line, VLOCKer’s FIORE with Primula as their starting kit in mid-2017. Since then, they have released several more kits and upgrade kits to the line, becoming even more ambitious in their designs.
Construction and Engineering
Let’s get something out of the way here. Volks is well known for garage kits. If you’re unfamiliar with garage kits, these are model figures, usually cast in resin, usually closer to the fixed PVC figures more popular with anime fans. Volks in particular are well-known for producing beautiful works of art that are generally considered among the best garage kits on the market. A modeler that manages to finish one properly is going to find a very nice display piece for their shelf.
Garage kits, however, are very different from the articulated girlpla that this guide concerns itself with. For one, they don’t need to be nearly as poseable due to their nature; secondly, they can insist on significantly more work and worse tolerances than articulated model kits as they don’t need to move.
The same qualities that make Volks an incredible producer of garage kits makes them absolutely horrible at making girlpla. These should be treated as if they were a traditional model kit in that sense even if identified as a snap-fit. Be prepared to work way more than you would have to with a Megami Device for results.
Customisability is also nigh-impossible. By their desire to prevent the use of other manufacturers’ parts using 4mm and cross-shaped pegs, it would be nearly impossible to use Kotobukiya, Bandai or any other manufacturers’ parts to modify or repair a FIORE kit without significant skill and experience in modification. While such a practice might be somewhat acceptable in the doll space, it is incredibly frustrating in a hobby as focused on customization as modeling.
Volks is also well-known for their iffy practices in the doll space, and those practices have been carried on to here. While industry standard in the plastic model space is to use 3 mm round pegs, inexplicably, Volks uses a combination of 4mm pegs and cross-shaped pegs. The consequence of using such connectors is, again, screwing over the modeler by making the things so hard to connect together that you might well give up before succeeding….
Aesthetics:
….and even should you succeed, the aesthetics of the line aren’t exactly great, with janky faceplates and designs that are questionable at best a lot of the time. While yes, the kits can be made to look good with tricks such as painting, applying varnish and other modifications, it should be stressed that most kits do not require extra touches to look passable and should generally look fine snap-built.
Later kits, in particular Dracaena, Cosmos and Setaria, have significantly better aesthetics than a lot of the earlier kits, but still maintain a lot of the fundamental issues of VLOCKer’s FIORE as a line. However, they’re way easier to deal with in their later output.
Ease of Acquisition:
Not only are these kits nearly impossible to acquire outside of Japan and America, most of the stock is restricted to Volks’ stores, though you can, as always, count on AmiAmi and other secondhand sites to have your back here.
The kits are on a surface level not TOO expensive, with Primula retailing for ¥3800 (£18/$24) and Dracaena retailing for ¥6500 (£30/$41). However, with most of the earlier kits relying on sales of Volks’ special option parts kits to make them look decent, and the various quality and engineering issues, the kits’ asking prices may look a tad higher than they really should be.
Personal Verdict?
Volks are competent toymakers in a lot of other areas, but perhaps girlpla wasn’t their finest area. While there aren’t the worst kits we know of (that honor being most likely one belonging to either Weapon Girl or Pretty Armor), the early kits are unimpressive. Making the mistake of treating Volks’ attempt at snap fit as a snap fit will cause you untold suffering.
However, treating FIORE like their garage kits, with the requisite time, money and experience, will get you pretty good results, especially with their later kits. Just don’t expect Megami Device or Nuke Matrix.
Personal Recommendations:
If, after all that, you still for some reason want a FIORE kit,please go for the later releases (Setaria, Dracaena, Cosmos). These kits are actually decent by Volks standards, though still well below everyone else. We liked Primula’s look, but we cannot recommend her to anyone in good faith.
Official Site: https://volksusa.store/collections/vlockers-fiore
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